


Pick The Poison (And Pour Yourself A Glass)

by inlovewithnight



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, The Academy Is...
Genre: BDSM, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:03:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William and Gabe have a kinky thing. Mike has feelings for William that he is completely refusing to acknowledge. TAI's about to record an album, which means William's due for a meltdown. Boys having feelings, some outbursts of violence, and a lot of fail, all on the way to figuring out if they can have a three-way relationship without anybody killing anybody else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pick The Poison (And Pour Yourself A Glass)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Bandom Big Bang 2010.

William wakes up on a hotel-room floor.

His mouth is dry and sour with the aftertaste of whiskey, his head aches, and as he pushes himself up onto his hands and knees he sees that his wrists are bloody and raw. He studies them for a minute, rubbing with his thumb just outside of the area of torn skin.

He needs to get up, rinse his mouth, clean out the wounds and check himself for any more. He needs to figure out where he is, remember if he's expected anywhere else, and either go there or go home.

He closes his eyes and lies down again, pressing his face against the floor. He's just going to sleep again for a while.  
**  
When he wakes up again, it's to the sound of his phone, ringing happily away somewhere across the room. He gets to his knees again, wincing with pain. Should've moved sooner. Should've at least made it to the bed. Stupid.

He doesn't even start looking for the phone until after it's stopped ringing. His jacket's hanging over the bathroom door, and he finds the phone in the pocket, screen showing a missed call from Carden and three texts from Gabe. He reads the texts first; typical Saturday-night thoughts from Gabe Saporta on a post-show buzz. He smiles a little, reading them, then winces as the corners of his mouth ache. He touches his fingertips to them and feels the sting of salt on torn skin. Ah. That, too, then.

He tosses the phone to the bed and does a fast once-over, mentally charting the bruises. He slides one hand over his throat and raises his eyebrows slightly. Not that. Surprising.

The phone beeps, announcing a voice mail, and he sighs. Mike left a message. It must be important, then, usually he doesn't bother. William sits on the edge of the mattress and punches at the buttons, closing his eyes.

 _Hey, Bill, where are you? I thought we were getting coffee. Call me when you get this. I'm heading home. Seriously, call me, though._

"Fuck." He closes his eyes and falls back on the bed, then jerks upright again as a sharp burst of pain goes through him. Shit. Shit.

He takes a deep breath and punches in a fast text to Mike. _so sorry im an idiot. dinner? my treat_

The reply comes fast, bless the man. _sounds good old man_

William shakes his head and tosses the phone down. Not going to rise to the bait on that one. Not today. He stands up and heads for the bathroom. Shower first. Then he'll go home, and put himself back together.  
**  
Mike shows up at six-thirty, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans and hood flipped up over his head. William laughs a little, looking at him. "You look like you're here to rob the place."

"Like you have anything worth stealing." Mike bumps him with his shoulder, hard, as he steps inside, and William bites his tongue to keep from making a sound. "So where are we going for dinner?"

"You want to go out?" William locks the door and tries to ignore the way Mike's looking at him, all sharp-eyed and closely. Mike always looks too fucking close. It's been driving William crazy for years. "I thought we could just order in. Watch a movie."

"You're turning boring in your old age."

"You're older than me, you know."

"By a couple _months_. And it's a mental thing, Beckett. It's all in your head." Mike sits down on the couch, stretching his legs out and toeing off his shoes. "We can stay in if it lets you take your Geritol and watch your stories on time."

"Asshole." William sits down next to him, grabbing the takeout menus from the table and tossing them at Mike. "Figure out what you want. I'll eat whatever."

He flips through channels while Mike looks at the menus, but he can still feel Mike watching him out of the corner of his eye, quick little glances every few minutes that William imagines digging into his skin like needles.

"I'll be right back," he says, getting to his feet and shoving his hands in the pocket of his own sweatshirt. "Order for me when you decide, you know what I like."

"Tasteless and bland," Mike says serenely, like William isn't acting weird at all, like he isn't twitchy. William's aware, in a distant kind of way, that the more Zen Mike gets the more twitchy he becomes, and that after this long Mike almost certainly is aware of that and using it to his advantage. Being aware doesn't give him any special abilities of self-control, though.

He goes down the hall to the bathroom and locks the door, leaning against the counter for a moment. Mike is looking, but he doesn't know anything. Not unless William gives it away.

He pushes his sleeves up and looks at his wrists. The chafe marks are dark red now, deeper over the curves of bone and lighter on the flat underside. He remembers now, vague and hazy with alcohol, that it was rope. He needs to be more careful next time. Ropeburns take too much concealment. The fact that he's wearing a hoodie at all is probably a giant flashing sign to Mike that something's a little bit off with him. He needs to make sure to bring his own cuffs, next time.

Of course, it wasn't like he'd been _planning_ in the first place, which makes it a little difficult to--

"Bill?" The knock on the door makes him jump and jam his thigh painfully against the underside of the counter. _Fuck_. "Bill, dude, what are you doing in there?"

"Nothing." He turns the water on, then back off, too quickly to pretend he was doing anything. "Be right out."

"Jerking off while I'm sitting on your couch is creepy, man."

"Damn it, Mike." He shakes his sleeves down over his wrists again and then rakes his fingers through his hair, staring into the mirror. "I'll be right out."

"I got Chinese."

"Cool." William can't tear his eyes away from his reflection. The marks at the corners of his mouth where the gag bit in are still red, and sore if he opens his mouth too wide or licks his lips. Mike probably noticed, even if he hasn't asked.

"Bill. What the fuck, man. Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Then get your ass out here and stop being weird."

William runs the sink again before he opens the door. By the time he does, Mike's gone back out to the living room, sitting on the couch with his feet tucked up under him and the remote in his hand.

"Anything good on?" William asks, leaning against the back of the couch.

"Baseball."

"Thought you were looking for a movie."

"No, you said we could watch a movie. I never agreed." Mike punches a few more buttons. "And there's nothing else on, seriously. Shit outta luck."

"Who's playing?"

"Tigers and Cards."

William makes a face. "Gross."

"Well, it's what we've got, so..." Mike tilts his head back, looking up at William with an unreadable look. William meets his eyes for a moment, then slides his gaze away, back to the screen. He digs his fingers into the back of the couch, fighting the sudden overwhelming impulse to lick at the chafe marks at the corners of his lips.

"Sit down," Mike says finally, looking at the screen as well. "You're weirding me out."  
**  
The game is terrible, but the Chinese is good, and there's enough beer in William's refrigerator to carry them all the way to the bottom of the ninth. William closes his eyes as the teams line up to shake hands, tilting his head back and draining the last of the bottle. "Well. That was sad."

"Tigers and Cards. What do you want?" Mike finishes his own beer and sets the bottle on the floor, placing it neatly at the end of the row of other empties stretching between the two of them.

"Good point." William stretches his legs out in front of himself slowly, wincing as his left knee refuses to pop.

"We leave on tour in two weeks."

William opens one eye a fraction, looking sideways at Mike. "Yes, I know."

Mike isn't looking at him. He's staring straight ahead, but his jaw is tight in a way that William's familiar with after all of these years. It's the look that means he's pissed and still trying to keep a grip on it, as opposed to pissed and ready to start letting everybody in a good-sized radius hear about it. There's a fine line to cross, between the two. William has something of a gift of knocking him right over it without even batting an eye.

"Are you going to be okay?" Mike asks flatly, watching the ESPN anchors recap things they just saw and that aren't any more interesting the second time around.

"Why wouldn't I be?" William's fingers itch to touch the marks on his mouth, his wrists, the bruises on his thighs. He curls them into his palms to keep them still.

"Because sometimes you come unglued."

"I don't know what you're referring to."

"Yeah, you do, you're just being a dick." Mike gets to his feet and stalks off into the kitchen. William presses his thumb against the inside of his wrist, grinding it down slowly against the mark.

"I'll be fine," he says when Mike comes back, drinking another beer. He didn't bring one for William. Asshole. "I'm not 'coming unglued.'" He makes vicious air quotes around the word, which makes Mike's eyes narrow, and very nicely done, Beckett, way to push him toward that line. "I'm fine. Leave it alone."

"You haven't been fine since you and Christine split."

William digs his thumb in harder, pressing until he sees white. "Leave it alone."

"You're doing something stupid. I don't know what it is, but I know you're doing something stupid, and you need to knock it off before we go on tour."

"I'm not having this discussion with you."

"Good, because I'm not having a _discussion_ , Bill." Mike gestures sharply with the bottle, sending beer spraying across the floor. "I'm telling you. Get your shit together before we go on tour, because we're going right from that into making a goddamn album, and we don't have any time for you to melt down."

"Well, is it melting or glueing? Try for a little consistency, Carden." William rolls his thumb against his wrist in slow circles, making the pain flare and fade, sending sparks up behind his eyes. It keeps him seated, keeps his voice low and close to steady.

Mike shakes his head and sets the half-full bottle on top of the TV. "Fuck you," he says, heading for the door. "See you in two weeks. Don't fuck this up."  
*****  
Mike doesn't get off on being right.

He doesn't _not_ enjoy it, obviously, but it's considerably less fun to be saying _I told you so_ when the thing he told was William having yet another goddamn meltdown. Right on schedule, really: time to write an album, time for Bill to freak out. It's like some kind of sick cosmic joke, and Mike saw the punchline coming a mile away.

He could've done without being right this time, is all.

He sits on a picnic table at a rest stop in Buttfuck, Nowhere, and watches Bill pace. His fingers itch for a cigarette, and his lungs twice as bad, but he's halfway through a bet with Butcher and the loser is buying the winner's smokes for the rest of this probably-godforsaken tour, so. He can gut this out.

"Beckett," he says, aware of how sharp his voice is, and that only half of that sharpness is courtesy of nicotine withdrawal. The rest is just good old-fashioned Bill Beckett-induced frustration. If there was any justice in the universe he would be fucking immune to that by this point. "Sit _down_."

"Mind your own business," comes the response, and Bill goes skittering across the rest area like a spider again. It makes Mike's bones ache just to watch him move; all sharp edges, sharp angles, sharp movements like his muscles and tendons are fighting themselves to do it.

They're a week into an eight-week tour and Bill is already entirely composed of tension. Mike's really looking forward to watching him wind tighter and tighter and maybe explode. If they're _really_ lucky, there might be a psychotic break somewhere around week four. Oh, goody. Mike can't even imagine.

"Sit down or I'll make you sit down."

"The whole point of getting off the bus is to stretch our legs, Carden. Why don't you stand up?"

Bill rakes his fingers through his hair, pulling it up and away from his face and drawing his skin tight over the bones. When he turns and looks at Mike the sun hits him just so and it's like the skin turns to tissue paper, and Mike can see the skull underneath.

Fucking creepy.

"Whatever," he says, forcing himself to look away, pulling his eyes down to the grass. "Do what you want."

"I will, thanks."

Bill always does whatever he wants. _Obnoxious, bitchy, stubborn, pig-headed little..._ Mike's fingers twist on the edge of the table, digging into old, weather-punished wood and tearing off splinters.

Watching Bill be a stubborn jackass, mocking him through it or shoving him out of it or getting in a red-faced-drunk screaming match with him about it at 3 AM until things crack open and heal over just out of a flat lack of options, all of those are things Mike knows how to do and has done, plenty, over the years. It's more or less what they're based on, what the band is based on. Other people don't get it and Mike doesn't care.

William is a stuck-up control-freak prima donna and a compulsive liar and Mike loves him like a brother. He would kill for the stupid bastard, just as sincerely as right now he wants to give him a black eye.

He breaks another splinter off the table and snaps it into quarters between his thumb and forefinger as William starts another lap around the rest area. Bill needs to talk about what's bugging him, or he's going to unspool all over the place into a giant mess that they'll all have to clean up, not just Mike alone. It's happened before. Bill needs to get it out and over with, and Mike should probably, will probably end up being the one to do it. He more or less knows where to hit to crack things open, and what he doesn't know, he can guess. He could get the process started right now.

But he doesn't want to, because Bill is an unbelievable pain in the ass who frankly deserves to stew in his own misery.

He slides off the table and starts back to the bus. Chiz will have some cigarettes stashed away, and he won't tell Butcher if Mike asks. It's in the rulebook of the fraternal order of guitarists stuck in bands with idiots. Hidden, special clause.  
**  
Chiz doesn't rat him out, but Mike loses the bet anyway, because he needs to smoke to keep from strangling Bill, and the impulse to strangle Bill comes up frequently enough that eventually Butcher catches him behind the bus, furiously chain-smoking the last of a pack he stole from one of their techs. ("Eventually" only takes three days, which makes Butcher all smug, and that's two more things to blame Bill for, the fact that he's putting out for Butcher's smokes for the rest of the tour and the fact that Butcher is _mocking_ him. Fucker.)

Shows are the only time that's any good; Bill always keeps it together longer for the fans than for anybody or anything else. He can be jittering all over the dressing room like he's about to fly apart, but the minute he's got the stage under his feet and the mic in his hand, he's good. He's on. Being a liar is Bill Beckett's true calling, and he never looks better than when he's practicing his art for a crowd.

Mike keeps his head down, watching the frets and strings under his fingers. He sees Bill from the corners of his eyes, watches him strut across the stage and throw his arms wide, pose and backbend, lean up on Sisky and high-five Chiz and run to the back of the stage to jump up on Butcher's drum riser. It's as easy as breathing for Mike to track Bill without looking directly at him. It's what he does.

Bill courts him, too, in his epic ridiculous stage dance, striding across the space at the front of the stage half-challengingly. Mike doesn't meet him halfway. That would be letting him win.

Bill always comes all the way, because that's what _he_ does; never back down, never realize when that line in the sand is there for a reason, always go all the way, whether because he wins or because he surrenders. And fuck, doesn't _that_ thought make Mike's breath catch in his throat and his fingers almost-not-quite stumble on his guitar, because Bill surrendering is a fucking thing to see. When he decides to give up and admit somebody else was right, he somehow manages to do it in a way that's like a victory, charged and glowing with defiance and...and fucking _balls_.

God, Mike hates his stupid ass as much as he loves him, sometimes. Especially now.

Bill swans over and drapes himself over Mike's shoulder, leaning down so his sweaty, gel-slick hair is pressed against Mike's jaw and cheek and nose, some pieces sliding over and some sticking to the skin. "Hey, that's not so bad, is it?" Bill howls into the mic, that fucking song about bad decisions and vengeful sex.

"Don't forget to take deep breaths." That line he fucking purrs, and he rolls off Mike's shoulder. He doesn't move away, doesn't even break contact, just moves his body against Mike's until they're leaning back to back. Mike's seen enough pictures and video to know that Bill's arched up off him in a way that's just to the left of pornographic, head back and hips thrust out, his weight balanced up on his toes and relying on Mike to support him.

And he does, of course; he widens his stance to shoulder-width, sinks back on his heels, and he holds Bill up until Bill pushes off him, vaults away like a goddamn ballerina, and darts to the front of the stage to lean out over the crowd and scream the last chorus like he still feels it, like those stupid words are still setting him on fire.

Mike flips his hair out of his eyes and hits the last chords hard, refusing to think about how two hours ago Bill was grimly downing a bottle of Jack and staring at himself in the mirror like he's never seen the guy in his reflection before. He's just being a rock star, like the melodramatic fuck he is.

"Thank you so much!" Bill yells, reaching down to brush at the upraised hands at the front of the crowd, ruffling them like paper flowers. "You're amazing! We love you!"

Mike fucking hates the word love.  
**  
They're in some bullshit college town in the middle of Missouri, which gets like a half-point of cred for having had a song written about it by a band that doesn't make Mike want to puke just by existing. After the show they go back to the bus, towel their faces and hair off with t-shirts that are already too soaked with sweat for it to matter, and then head out looking for a bar.

Mike isn't expecting miracles, given that it _is_ the middle of Missouri, but there's a pretty sweet little place down the street from the venue, leaning more toward disaffected locals than the trying-too-hard-to-pretend-they're-not-in-Missouri college kids at the couple of other places they stuck their heads in and rejected. Mike's pretty sure Siska would have preferred overly-shiny college kids, but tough shit, Siska wasn't allowed a vote.

It's Chiz's turn to get the first round, which is awesome because Australian honor demands he buy decent beer. After that they're all on their own and it's time for cheap domestic, which Mike finds comforting anyway. Like home. The same shitty watery beer he's been drinking since before he had his first place with Bill, sneaking cans in his friends' basements or hanging with bands after shows. There's fucking nostalgia in that awful beer.

He looks over at Bill, opening his mouth to ask if he remembers, too, the words cutting off in his throat when he sees that Bill's got three shots of whiskey lined up in front of him, instead. Something chilly runs down Mike's spine and he tries to shrug it off. Bill likes to drink. They all do. It's none of his business. Doing shots while he's in the kind of funk he's been in lately probably isn't the best idea in the world, but it's not Mike's job to police Bill's bad fucking decisions.

Or, well, maybe it is his job, but it's self-appointed and thankless and that means he can ignore it if he wants to.

"Butcher," he says, pushing off the bar and nodding toward the pool tables. "You up for this?"

"Always," Butcher says, handing his drink off to Siska and wiping his hands on his jeans. "I'm gonna kick your ass, Carden."

"You can try, fucker."

"I'll play the winner," Siska says, following them across the room. "Are we playing for cash?"

"Mike probably just wants to win the right to not buy my smokes anymore, because he is a weak-willed man and a slave to chemicals." Butcher sounds serene, practically Zen like he always does, but Mike knows better. He's straight-up evil.

"Fuck you," he says, which doesn't answer anything. Butcher just laughs and starts racking the balls. Mike takes another drink, determinedly not looking over at Bill. He doesn't give a fuck what Bill does, or doesn't do. He's not his babysitter.

Unfortunately, it turns out that he can declare that all he wants, he's still attuned enough to Bill that his head swivels around like he's doing a community-theater version of The Exorcist the minute Bill starts raising his voice. Mike shouldn't even have been able to _hear_ that over the bar noise, or recognize it through the beer in his system and the sheer annoyance of losing three games straight to the chuckleheads he calls his band. But he hears, and he recognizes, and he's halfway back to the bar by the time Bill draws himself up to his full stupid height and throws the first punch.

Stupid height doesn't help with stupid-skinny and not particularly inclined to do this whole fighting thing very often. He hits the guy he's arguing with, a short blond dude in a t-shirt for a band that Mike actually might have wanted to start up a conversation about if his best friend hadn't been hitting the guy in the face, square in the nose. But blond dude has a friend, taller and bearded and standing close enough to clock Bill in the neck.

And nobody's allowed to do that to Bill but Mike.

The fight's a mess while it lasts, but it doesn't last long. Butcher wades in behind Mike, throwing punches, but Chiz has half a brain and runs to get Tony, who gets the bouncer. It's probably only about ten minutes before they're all out on the sidewalk and getting herded back toward the bus while Tony lists off all the reasons he hates them.

Mike tunes him out, pressing his hand against the split-open line above his left eyebrow. It's bleeding all over the place, but he's been hit in the head enough times to know when it's just head wounds being stupid and when it's a real problem. This is the first one; he'll slap some tape on it when they get back to the bus and it'll be fine.

Bill's nose, on the other hand, is going to be puffy and weird-looking for at least a day or two, and he's quite possibly going to have a black eye. Because that's just what they want their frontman to look like when their current marketing strategy, in Pete-speak, is "Bilvy's pretty and ridiculous. Teenage girls want him to touch them in their special places. Sell _that_."

Mike says as much, loudly, as they get forced-marched back to the bus. He aims it at the back of Bill's head, because of course the fucker won't look back at him. Bill is physically incapable of admitting when he has massively fucked up. Mike gets a mean little thrill out of watching Bill's shoulders get tighter with every word he says, and he keeps going, shoving Siska aside when he tries to elbow him into being quiet. Fuck that. Bill picked himself a fight because he's a pissy little princess and now he gets to deal with the consequences.  
**  
When they get back to the bus, Tony tells them to go to bed and not talk to each other for the rest of the night. Mike strongly suspects that Tony sees his job as essentially being a kindergarten teacher whose students are exceptionally tall and drunk. It's the easiest explanation for why his favorite management technique is issuing time-outs.

Mike ignores him and goes to the back of the bus, where they keep the first-aid kit. The back lounge has a mirror and someone left half a bottle of water back there, so he splashes some on the hem of his t-shirt and starts trying to clean up his face.

"You're making a mess," Bill's voice comes from the doorway. Mike keeps his eyes fixed on the mirror, watching the tendons in his neck tense as he very carefully does not look over at him.

He hears it when Bill moves, though, and he would swear he can feel it, feel the heat in the room shift as Bill comes closer. Too much proximity over too many years. He doesn't want to be this aware of where Bill is all the time, what he's doing. "You're making it worse," Bill goes on, a familiar note of irritation cutting through the blur of pain and booze in his voice. "Let me--"

He reaches out and Mike moves before he can think, slapping Bill's hand back hard. He looks, finally, and their eyes meet, or he meets one of Bill's eyes and half of the one that's swelling shut. Jesus Christ, how does Bill manage to do this shit to himself? Is he completely fucking incompetent and helpless in _every_ possible way or just--

Bill's expression changes subtly, stiff-jawed defiance giving way a little. Not to apology--Bill never apologizes, especially not to Mike--but something in the neighborhood.

"You're making it deeper," Bill says. His voice is different, too. "Sit down and let me do it."

This is how it always ends up, how it always has, since the first week in that godawful apartment. Maybe before. Since they decided to stop hating each other and try something else. Christ, Mike can still see that kid in Bill, all awkward angles and sharp corners and stubbornness that he can't articulate and so he just _digs in_ and nobody around him can understand why.

Mike sits down and tilts his head back, shoving the bottle of water at Bill. "You're bleeding, too."

"Not as bad." It isn't; the cut's under his eye, and shallow. It's mostly stopped bleeding and a lot of the mess got wiped away when he cleaned up his nose. Still, it pisses Mike off by existing.

Bill grabbed a towel from the kitchen on his way in. He dabs at Mike's face carefully, a little clumsily but hyper-aware of it and working doubletime to compensate. Mike closes his eyes and lets him work, sinking his teeth into his lower lip and taking slow, even breaths until the bandage is pressed down in place and he feels Bill step back again.

"Now you," he says, eyes still closed. The cushion shifts as Bill sits down next to him and then the towel falls cold and wet across his wrist. "Totally unsanitary, Beckett." He stands up and walks out, grabbing Butcher's towel from the bathroom and looking down the aisleway to the bunks. He can hear Butcher and Siska talking softly, and the bass line of whatever Chiz is listening to on his headphones, too loud. They've all got a sixth sense for when to clear out and leave him and Bill alone. Butcher says it's not a sixth sense, it's PTSD, but fuck him.

He grabs an ice pack from the freezer and throws it against Bill's chest as he comes back into the lounge. "Ice your face when I'm done. Maybe you'll end up only looking quasi-grotesque."

"I'll turn it into a good story."

Mike bites his lip again, concentrating hard as he starts dabbing at Bill's face the way Bill had done to him. He's not quite as gentle, but that's only half on purpose. Bill doesn't seem to expect an apology. Mike doesn't say anything, just pays attention to what he's doing, and by the time he's done Bill's shoulders have relaxed a little, like he thinks he's getting out of this scot-free.

"You've gotta stop doing this," Mike says while he's taping the butterfly bandage under Bill's eye. "Seriously."

"Stop what?" Bill's shoulders tighten all over again, but he doesn't sound combative. He sounds tired. Mike doesn't know how to answer him anyway, not in any way that won't turn into a new fight. He's tired, too; too tired for that.

"Is it anything I can fix?" he asks instead, turning away to put stuff back in the first-aid kit.

He can feel Bill looking at him for a long moment before he answers, but he's careful not to look up. "I don't think so."

"Figure out who can." He rubs the heel of his hand against his forehead, careful to avoid his own bandage. "You can't keep doing this. We can't."

"You got to hit a guy with a pool cue. You can't tell me you haven't been wanting to do that for _years_."

"I didn't hit him. I just swung at him." His arms do still kind of itch to feel that impact climb up them, though there's no chance in hell he's going to admit it. "Which is the only reason I'm not in jail right now, by the way."

"Yeah." Bill tilts his head back, looking up at Mike with one tired eye and one that's swelled up too much to see. Mike's stomach twists, looking at him. Fucking Bill. "I don't know, Mike. It's just...a mess. In my head."

Mike has heard that before, plenty, and he feels just as helpless now as the first time. He used to scream at Bill to just fucking clean it up, then, and stop being such a drama queen. He doesn't do that anymore.

"Put the ice pack on your face," he says instead. "I'm going to bed."  
**  
At around four in the morning, someone starts pounding on the bus door. Siska and Butcher curse in mingled protest, Chiz just groans helplessly, and Tony screams about calling the cops. Mike buries his face in his pillow and fantasizes about working retail again and how absolutely fucking awesome that would be.

His bunk shakes as Bill climbs down from the one above it. Mike can see him through the sliver of open curtain; he's holding his phone, and the light from the screen lets Mike see the confused expression on his face, distorted by swelling and sleep.

Bill pads up to the front of the bus and opens the door. "What are you doing here?"

"Butcher called me."

Mike closes his eyes and turns his face back against the pillow. Well. Holy shit. He hadn't expected that voice, though he probably should have, now that he thinks about it. Who else, really? Who else at four AM?

"You're supposed to be in Nebraska." Bill sounds bewildered. Tired. He sounds like he needs someone to give him a hug.

"Yeah. I've been driving for the last, like, four hours." Mike smiles a little, blinking in the dark. Yeah, he should have guessed. Who would Butcher call in the middle of the night because Bill fucked up, who would take the call, who would drive all night to get to Columbia, Missouri? Nobody but fucking Gabe Saporta.

"You didn't have to do that." Bill's voice is wavering somewhere between pleased and pissed. Anybody else, it would be a coin toss for which side he'd end up on, but it's Gabe.

"Well, I did." Gabe's voice is soft, almost gentle, and Mike's pretty sure Bill's either getting that hug or about to. "There's no all-night anything in this piece of shit town. I got a hotel room out by the highway. C'mon. We'll talk."

Bill tries to close the door quietly, but it bangs in Mike's head like a drum.  
*****  
William looks around the room slowly. "You have some kind of a gift for sketchy motels."

"Nothing wrong with that." Gabe has to pull on the door two or three times before the latch catches. He does up all the locks as if they're going to do any good at all on a door that doesn't even want to _shut_. William bites his lip to keep from laughing and sits carefully on the edge of the table.

"This is _really_ sketchy. That's all I'm saying."

"I hear you." Gabe tucks his hands in his pockets, leaning back against the door and studying William carefully. He's still wearing a baseball cap with his hood flipped up over it, re-drawing himself as his own most cliched image. He looks tired as shit. "But it works for our purposes."

"What are our purposes?"

"Figuring out why you're doing dumb shit."

William frowns and sits back further on the table, drawing his knees up and sitting cross-legged. "Don't pull any punches or anything."

"Bill."

"Like you've never gotten in a fight in a bar." He can hear himself, knows he sounds petulant and sulky. But his face hurts and he's tired and Gabe's looking at him like some kind of disappointed parent, which is fucking funny for a vast and wide variety of reasons. "And don't look at me like that."

"Look at you like what, like you're kind of an idiot? Because you are." Gabe pushes off the door and moves over to the bed, flopping down on his back and stretching his arms over his head, legs hanging off over the end. "And yes, I have gotten in fights in bars. Years ago, when I was young and stupid. I'm over that shit now."

"Well, I'm still young." He sounds downright _whiny_ now. At least he's not contradicting himself.

"Yeah, but you're not stupid, Bill. You've never been stupid." William looks over and Gabe's looking back at him, eyes sharper now, intent and piercing. "So what's up with this?"

"I can't just have a bad night? It has to be a..." He gestures vaguely, hands flailing around his face. "A this?"

"From what they tell me, it wasn't just tonight. You've been off the whole tour."

William drops his hands back to his thighs, squeezing tight, pressing muscle down against bone and using the flare of pain to keep the matching flash of anger in check. "So my band's spying on me?"

"They worry about you." Gabe shrugs and tilts the bill of his hat down over his face. "Plus you've been being a total bitch at me every time I text you, and I know you PMS like crazy but it wouldn't go on for _this_ long."

"Asshole."

"Whatever." He pulls on the bill of the hat again, tugging it off by dragging it down over his face. He wrinkles his nose and tosses it aside, stretching his arms out again. "You can tell me what's going on or...well, you can tell me what's going on, we both know you'll crack eventually so you might as well get it over with."

"Yeah, because you interrogate people like the fucking Spanish Inquisition."

"Completely inappropriate comparison. My people were the ones being fucked over by the Inquisition, thank you very much."

"Oh, right." William leans back slowly, pushing past the tension in his body inch by inch until he's lying on the table and looking up at the ceiling, legs still tucked up under him. "Sorry."

"And you're supposed to be the smart one. Sad state of affairs."

The ceiling is a maze of water stains and cracked tiles. "Sorry again."

"Talk to me, Bill."

"I don't know what to say." He blinks up at the lines and splotches on the ceiling like they might resolve into a map or at least some answers. "I don't know what's wrong.»

"Yeah, you do."

"Nothing's wrong. Everything's wrong."

"Bill."

"Christine left." Saying her name still feels strange. It leaves a hollow space in his throat and his stomach.

"You guys have been on and off before."

"This time is different." He shrugs before Gabe can ask the follow-up question, eyes never leaving the ceiling. "It just feels different. Permanent."

"Okay." He can't see Gabe, but somehow he knows he's nodding, slow and serious and probably still staring, peeling William's defenses away with his eyes. "What else?"

"That's not enough?"

"I don't think so, do you?"

William shrugs a little, shoulders rolling against the table. "It's just...loud. In my head." If he had been looking at Gabe before, he wouldn't be now, wouldn't be able to bear it. It's all in the subtle emphasis of the sentence, the relative weights of the words. He can't remember exactly when he and Gabe started speaking in code. Definitely before he even really knew what it was he was saying.

He was a natural, someone who had the words inside him all along and said them without thinking. Which he found out when other people started answering the questions he didn't know he was asking, listening to the invitations he didn't know he was issuing.

"Come here."

Gabe was the first one who took the time to translate him back to himself, who stopped and looked instead of just listening, who realized he had no idea what he was doing and walked him through it step by step. Gabe took care of him.

"William. Come here."

He sits up, wincing as one of the sore spots on his back protests the motion. That'll need to be stretched out before the next show. He has to be able to perform, jump and bend and put on a show. They expect that from him.

Gabe is sitting up, too, sweatshirt off now, t-shirt advertising some bar in New York that probably closed years ago. He doesn't say it again, just holds out his hand, and William kicks his legs off the edge of the table, gets to his feet, crosses over to him.

Gabe reaches up and curves his hand around the back of William's neck gently, carefully. "We're not done talking," he says, his voice so soft. William closes his eyes and lets that voice slide over him like warm water. "We're going to figure this out. Get you sorted out. Can't have the smart guy being stupid. It throws the whole world out of whack."

It's unfinished, hanging in the air. William swallows hard before he speaks. "But?"

Gabe's hand tightens just a little, and William tilts his head back into the pressure. "But first we're going to shut your head up." He pushes down, hard, and William doesn't hesitate to surrender, dropping to his knees.  
**  
William half expects Gabe to have come prepared, so it's almost comforting when he starts moving around the room slowly, checking the drawers and closets, eyes narrowed and brain almost visibly going a mile a minute as he starts to improvise. Apparently William isn't _entirely_ predictable, and Gabe doesn't actually know _everything_.

"It's been a long time since you called me." William starts, both at the sudden break in the silence and the eerie possibility that Gabe was following his thoughts just to prove them wrong. "But I have a hunch it hasn't been a long time since you've done this."

Gabe steps into William's line of sight, standing there hipshot and twisting a hand towel slowly in his hands, drawing it tight into a cord. William feels a sound rising up in his throat just at the sight, one he isn't sure if it wants to be a sob or the word _please_ or just a raw animal noise that would embarrass him to even think about making anywhere but on stage or here, like this, on his knees.

"When was the last time you did this?" Gabe takes a step closer, still holding the towel twisted tight. "Answer me. Be honest."

Gabe can tell when William lies regardless, but it's even easier like this, when William's head is both too loud and aching with bullshit and too hazy with want to be able to keep track of his own tells.

"Two weeks before the tour," he says, and Gabe takes another step closer.

"Who was he?"

William licks his lips. "I don't know."

"Somebody you met in a bar?"

Gabe's voice is neutral and even; he's just asking a question. But it's one he already knows the answer to, and the disapproval he's keeping out of his tone is written in all of the lines of his body. William can see it everywhere when he looks up at Gabe through his lashes.

Again, he doesn't bother trying to lie. "Yes."

"Was it safe?"

William hesitates, and Gabe's jaw tightens, his hands taking another twist in the towel. "Answer me."

"Technically safe or effectively safe?" Splitting hairs might not be the best idea right now; in fact, it almost certainly isn't, but it's what he's got.

Gabe shakes his head, laughing a little. "I'm going to take a guess that you're not just being cute. That probably means you gave him a safeword and he used a condom, but not much else in terms of limits or you showing any signs of common sense."

It's not a question, so William doesn't answer. He licks his lips again, ducks his head a little, and waits. If Gabe's pissed enough to pull the plug on this now, he isn't sure what he's going to do; his dick is already hard and the pit of his stomach feels hot and twisted. That energy's got to go somewhere or he's going to explode, and he isn't sure what will be left in that case.

"Bilvy, Bilvy," Gabe says softly, and William looks up at him as sharply as he can manage. God, he hates that stupid nickname, and Gabe knows it. "One way or another, baby."

Wililam has no idea what that's supposed to mean, and he's getting close to annoyed enough to ask. Before he can make up his mind, Gabe closes the last space between them and taps two fingers against William's jaw. "Open." He slides the towel into his mouth like a bit on a horse, a solid, choking gag.

"Bite," Gabe says. The roll of rough cotton is a little too thick to be comfortable. His jaw is going to ache like hell by the time they're done.

Gabe steps back and starts undoing his belt, watching William through narrowed eyes. "If you drop it, I stop. That's your safety. Understood?" William nods and Gabe tugs the belt free, doubling it and rubbing the leather over his palm.

"Don't have anything to tie your hands," Gabe goes on, and William bites his lip, wishing he'd thought to get dressed again before they left the bus. He went to bed in sweats and a t-shirt, and Gabe's right, that leaves them with nothing, not even one of the bandannas he used to keep around. Something tight around his wrists would feel so good right now, something he could fight against that would refuse to give.

"So I'm just going to have to rely on your self-control." Gabe grabs William's wrists and brings them around in front of William's chest, pressing them together until William interlaces his fingers, his hands clasped like he's praying. If he could laugh without losing the gag and making everything stop before it begins, he would. It's a bizarre fucking parody, perfect in its way, a fuck-you to the church he never loved properly anyway and that loved him wrong in return.

Gabe moves around behind him and cards his fingers roughly through William's hair, pushing his head forward and down to bare his neck. His fingers linger there next, on the rise of William's spine, and William fights not to start to shake. He doesn't want to give away how much he needs this.

Gabe knows. Gabe always knows. Fuck him anyway.

Gabe's hand lingers, steadying. William knows to brace himself when it finally pulls away, but he's still not prepared, not really, for the first smack of the belt. It goes through him like ice that blossoms into raw red heat as the nerves catch up. He chokes a little, eyes closing tight and teeth sinking deeper into the gag. The second stroke comes before the first one has quite settled into him, and he moans.

Gabe doesn't say anything while he works him over. He never does. The only sounds are William's low, muffled responses of pain and relief, and sometimes a slight grunt of effort from Gabe when he swings. It could be the effort of holding back as much or more than anything else; Gabe is absolutely, painstakingly precise at this, like an artist, and William never doubts for a moment that he has perfect control.

Sometimes he wishes that Gabe didn't, that this could be wild and unrestrained, that Gabe would rip him apart and burn the pieces, and what was left wouldn't be William at all. Something else. Something better. Sometimes he wishes that Gabe would talk while he did this, call him names, tell him everything he's done to deserve it and exactly why he's no better than shit under Gabe's shoes. The guys he finds to do this when he won't call Gabe, sometimes they do all of those things, but it's never right. Never quite perfect. He wants those things _and_ Gabe, wants violence and humiliation from Gabe's hand and Gabe's voice, and it's never going to be quite right otherwise. He'll never quite get there, the _there_ that he can't even define to himself except that it's always farther away.

The tenth stroke curves up over his shoulder and he screams into the gag, eyes closing tight and body rocking forward. The white-hot pain shocks him out of the distancing pattern his mind wandered off in, the restless yearning for _more_ , by reminding him of _this_. He doesn't lose the gag, half by luck and half by effort.

Gabe circles around him slowly, tossing the belt down and tugging the towel from between William's teeth. It takes a similar effort to make himself let it go, his aching jaw almost locked by now.

"Good," Gabe says, dropping the towel and rubbing William's jaw lightly. "You take it so pretty, William. So pretty for me." His jaw hurts, it fucking kills, and then Gabe squeezes slightly and William's eyes almost roll back in his head. "Now take a little more."

He hears Gabe's zipper slide down and he opens his mouth, eyes squeezing shut as Gabe rubs his cock against his lips and then inside, hard and already salty-slick at the tip. He does just what Gabe said, he takes it, relaxing his jaw as much as the ache will allow and letting Gabe fuck his mouth, his throat, fingers moving up to grip William's hair as he thrusts.

"Good," he says, "fuck, William, so fucking good. Always...always so fucking--"

He comes, and William takes that, too, swallowing him down and feeling hot tears escape from the stretch at the corners of his mouth and the ache in his throat to match his jaw. He wants to babble and beg for more, he wants to suck Gabe until Gabe's as broken as he is, he wants to sink lower to the floor and lick Gabe's feet.

But Gabe is pushing him back, guiding him down to the floor and pinning him with his body. He kisses him, rough and hungry, and slides his hand down between their bodies, batting at William's hands until he releases his grip and presses them against the floor. Gabe wraps his hand around William's cock and jerks him fast and tight, sliding his thumb over the head at the end of each stroke. His teeth catch at William's lower lip and his tongue. It's too much, he's wanted this too much to last much longer, and he comes hot and messy over his own stomach and Gabe's hand.

Gabe kisses him one more time, deeper, then pulls away slowly. William lies still and lets Gabe move over him, cleaning them both with the reclaimed towel. He lets Gabe tug him into a sitting position and check his back, then help him up and over to the bed. Gabe arranges him on his stomach like a doll, and William lets him do that, too, because he's lost in a landscape that's half the pleasant white-gold of post-orgasm and half dull red with pain. He kind of wants to stay there forever, because with those colors mixed together it seems like there's no room for the messy darkness that takes up all of the room in his head so much of the time.

Gabe stretches out next to him and kisses the back of his neck, rubbing his hand gently over part of William's back that isn't coming up in a belt mark. "We'll finish talking in the morning," he mumbles in William's ear, nuzzling blindly.

"Is morning," William whispers. He can't manage any more sound than that; he's tapped out, empty, drained to bare glass, and he wants the feeling to last forever.

"Smartass." Gabe kisses his cheek as he says it, negating the nonexistent sting. "Sleep now."

"Did good?" He hates himself for asking, for needing _more_ after everything he's already taken, everything Gabe already gave.

"Did perfect. You're amazing, William." Gabe kisses him again and tugs the blanket up over them both. It's scratchy but warm, and William closes his eyes, that slight change in sensation threatening to overload him. "Go to sleep. I've got you."

William is gone almost before the words are said, but they sink down into his sleep like stones in water.  
**  
William's phone rings at ten o'clock, when he's had all of three hours of sleep, and from the miserable croaking noise he makes into the phone, Tony knows it. His sympathy doesn't stretch very far, though.

"We're leaving in half an hour," Tony says. "Please do not screw me over, I am begging you."

"'m more professional than that," William mumbles, pressing the heel of his hand over his good eye. The light hurts, almost as much as his other eye hurts by virtue of being fucked-up and swollen and having been punched. God, his entire face hurts. And his back, Jesus. He aches _everywhere_ and at the moment none of it is in a good way.

"See you in thirty," Tony says. "I'll have coffee and bagels waiting."

So he does have a _shred_ of humanity. That's wonderful. "You're the best, Tony."

"I know. Tell Saporta to get your ass back over here."

William hangs up and pokes Gabe in the ribs. "Gabe."

Gabe makes a garbled moaning sound that sounds like it's half wordless protest and half an attempt to say "fuck you" without using any consonants.

"Gabe, wake up, I need to get back to the bus."

Gabe lifts his head two inches off the pillow and squints at him. " _Now_?"

"We have to get on the road to...um. Somewhere." William half-falls out of the bed and aims himself in the general direction of the bathroom. "Texas, I think."

"Fuck Texas." William nods and shuts the bathroom door behind him. When he comes out again, Gabe's half-dressed and stabbing at the buttons on the remote, which he's holding backwards. William stumbles over and turns it around in Gabe's hand.

"Need the weather," Gabe mumbles by way of explanation, squinting at the screen. "Fuck. It's raining all through Nebraska. I have to drive back through that. Goddamn it."

"Sorry."

"I'm going to crash and die." He turns the TV off again and throws the remote onto the bed. "We didn't get to finish our talk." William shrugs. "If I knew you'd have to leave so fucking early, I would've made you keep talking last night."

"And then we'd be even more miserable right now. Guess it's a good thing."

"Don't talk to me about being miserable. You get to be on a bus. With bunks. Where you can go back to sleep."

William gives him a blank look. "Remember who else is on that bus with me?"

"Oh, yeah. You're fucked." Gabe tugs his hood up and shuffles toward the door. "But at least you don't have to drive through Nebraska."

The drive back to the bus is quiet except for Gabe mumbling curses at any other car that gets within fifty feet or so of him. William stares out the window and presses against the spot on his shoulder where the belt bit in. It aches low and hot, spreading through him slowly, and he thinks that will help for a few days, will echo through him deep and solid.

"I'll call you," Gabe says as he pulls up behind the bus. William still has ten minutes to spare. "We're not done talking, Beckett."

William nods, brushing his hair off his forehead and looking out the window at the sidewalk. They're not done talking, no. But he's not any more inclined to start explaining than he was last night, and he doesn't imagine that's going to change any time soon. Half of it he doesn't understand himself, half of the remainder he doesn't know how to put in words, and the final quarter, he just plain doesn't want to say.

"Drive safely," he says, leaning across the console and leaving a fast, dry kiss on Gabe's cheek. "I mean it, be careful. I owe you one, and I'd rather pay you back in sex than have you haunt me forever."

"So would I." Gabe catches William's wrist before he can get out of the car, holding on until William looks at him. "It'll be okay." William nods stiffly. "It really will."

"I know." William smiles at him, honest but closed-mouthed. "I need to get on the bus."

Gabe lets go and William half-falls out of the car, then again on his way up the bus steps. He doesn't look back to see the car pull away. There isn't any point.  
*****  
Mike doesn't ask any questions. He wants to; he's going half fucking crazy wanting to. He wants to ask what they did, what they talked about, what Gabe's secret is. If there's some kind of magic the rest of them are all missing out on but that Bill needs.

He knows that Gabe's got plenty of things that the rest of them don't--he's known that from the first time he met the guy. That smirk and those eyes and the way he added "from Midtown" onto his name as if they didn't know, as if that wasn't the whole goddamn reason they were there. Gabe's got worlds of things that they don't. Gabe is from another planet.

So Mike doesn't ask, when Bill gets back from wherever it is that he was. Bill waves aside the coffee and bagel that Tony offers and slouches directly back to his bunk, climbing up past Mike with the vaguest mumble of hello. That's when Mike could ask, could grab Bill's leg and nag at him until he either cracked and spilled or started screaming. A year ago Mike wouldn't have hesitated, would've gone for any sort of reaction.

Now he slips his earbuds in, takes a bagel for himself when Tony offers it, and curls up in the dark of his own bunk to wait. He doesn't know what he's waiting _for_ , but he's going to bide his time and see what happens. If he's a little bit patient, the answers might come on their own.

At first it looks like the answer is simple: Gabe worked some Cobrafied stealth magic and fixed whatever was wrong in one morning of hugging and crying or whatever the fuck. Bill is calmer, easier. At the show that night he is _on_ in the way that spills over to the whole band and pulls them together like he's tightening strings into tune. It's like something under the skin, Bill's energy coming out and winding around them and tuning them up until they're all the same frequency, the same voice, the same _thing_ and the audience is screaming along.

Bill even turns his fucked-up face into a funny story, one that all of the kids seem more than happy to buy into. It's a good night. So Mike doesn't ask, again. On the way back to the bus he pulls Bill against him in a one-armed hug, and Bill leans into it. He kind of rubs his shoulder against Mike's chest, like a cat, and smiles at him. "Good show," he says, and Mike nods and lets him go. He doesn't know what Gabe did or said, but it seems to have worked, and maybe it's not any of his business to know any more than that. He should just keep his mouth shut and thank God or whatever for Gabe.

It's still good the next show, and the one after that, and a week out from Missouri. Bill starts making noise about getting started on the writing, about how they need to hit the ground running as soon as the tour's over. Mike's fingers itch just hearing him talk about it. Fuck, yes, he's ready to write, too, to make something new out of all these bits and pieces of living.

And maybe it'll be different this time. They've smoothed things out, they've changed things. They've got a whole new dynamic, and maybe it'll be good, maybe it'll be better. Bill's acting like a sane person. He's calm, he's funny. Gabe fixed him like a mechanic popping a new radiator into place and keeping things from exploding, and even if Mike has no idea _how_ , he's fucking glad.

Another week passes and he really does start to believe it. And then they get to Albuquerque.  
**  
The problem in Albuquerque isn't that something changes. Mike's been watching, and nothing changes, not that he can see. Nothing _happens_. Bill just...unspools. His edges start fraying, cracks start showing, for no reason that Mike can see at all. He still retreats into the back lounge with his notebook, but instead of yelling up front every so often asking for suggestions for words that rhyme with "soul," he's quiet and evasive. He snaps at anybody who tries to talk to him and he practically falls on the notebook and hides it with his body if anybody tries to look.

He's thinking too damn much. Mike can see it, how he's pulling back into his head, his shoulders drawing tighter and all of his edges showing sharp through his skin.

Bill broods and he stares off bleakly into space like he's pining for the moors or some fucking thing, and Mike can't decide if he wants to punch something or laugh. It's like they've all gone back in time, and they're retracing their steps, doing the same thing, the _exact_ same thing he thought they'd fixed already.

He just wishes he knew what it was, what it _is_ in Bill's head that he can ignore, or if he's not ignoring it, he can _manage_ , sometimes but not others. Mike's not an idiot; he knows that talented people are fucked up. What Bill calls an _artistic temperament_ when he's in a good mood, all wide-eyed and deliberately, exaggeratedly pretentious, goes hand in hand with demons nine times out of ten. And he knows that Bill knows that, too, and that Bill's on top of his own shit, as much as he can be, whenever he can be.

Then sometimes, he's not. And that always means that something's going to give.

Mike isn't sorry about last time things got this kind of bad, when something had to break to take the strain. He's not sorry about Tom, and if someone held him down and pulled his fingernails out, he wouldn't pretend that he was. It had to happen, and it did, and if he's going to go down as the bad guy in the way everybody remembers it, that's just fine. Fuck, maybe he even _was_ the bad guy. Who remembers now? It hasn't been all that long, not really, but who the fuck remembers already? They all started rewriting history the minute it was past, and maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. Maybe that's the way it _has_ to be, the way the whole world has to work for anybody to manage to stay sane.

He's not happy with this level of introspection. This sort of thing is Bill's gig, Bill who sometimes seems to rewrite his own story on the fly with every breath he takes. He's been doing it since he was a kid. Bill thinks that playing with narrative is art, whether it's a song or a novel or the story you tell about yourself in your head when you're trying to sleep at night.

Mike just plays the stupid guitar. Narrative is not what he does. Turning reality inside-out and looking for the seams the way Bill does gives him a stomachache. On the one hand, that means he's not the one curled up in his bunk throwing off enough bad energy to fuel the bus. On the other, that means he has no idea what to do with the guy who _is_.

It pisses him off, in a low, dull, hot way that keeps getting worse in the pit of his stomach and the back of his head, where he shoves it because there is no time or place to deal with this shit right now. They have shows to do, and fixing Bill takes time.

He corrects himself now, when he catches himself thinking that. No. The process that he used to think of as fixing Bill, that takes time, and screaming, and heavily application of alcohol, and sometimes violence. But it's getting clearer and clearer that it's not actually _fixing_ shit. It's just patching over, putting on a happy face and some paint, and then setting off to run everything into the fucking wall again.  
**  
Week seven plus four days: the end is in sight and they're tooling around on West Coast highways. They cross paths with the Cobras again, in northern California when Cobras are on their way down from Seattle and TAI is heading up to Portland.

They planned this ahead of time, for once, a hotel night together with a pre-vetted, awesome bar nearby. They've all been looking forward to it with an edge that's above and beyond typical eagerness for a hotel night, hungry for people who haven't worn out their entertainment value, and who typically bring a lot of stupid stories and manic energy to a room, and who are always willing to buy lots and lots of rounds of drinks. Everybody gives a tired, giddy cheer when they pull into the lot and see the Cobra bus already there, slick and dismal in the spitting-down rain.

Mike hauls his bag up to the room he's sharing with Chiz. He's decided pretty firmly by now, and made a formal declaration letting everybody know, that guitarists are the only sane people anywhere. The rest of the band promptly tossed out enough counter-examples just among people they've toured with that Chiz proposed changing the statement to _Australians_. Whatever. Mike doesn't care. He is going to shower, and then he is going to sleep forever, in the same room as a person whom he does not, at the moment, want to kill, and it's going to be awesome.

"Lies," Chiz says simply when Mike informs him of that plan. "There is a bar across the parking lot and everybody else is already there. You can't stand being left out."

Australians fucking suck.

They get over to the bar just in time to see Gabe enfold Butcher in a world-class hug and declare "Man, it is good to see you! How's life in smart-guy land?"

"I wouldn't know, I'm on tour with The Academy Is," Butcher says, laughing easily and then squeaking as Gabe grabs his ass hard enough to make him jump.

That's just cold, really, cold enough to prompt a spontaneous vote that Butcher's buying the first round. Mike grins as he sinks into a corner booth after his own hug and groping from Gabe. This almost feels normal. Kinda close to right.

The room gets louder, drinks come around faster, and Mike feels the tense exhaustion of tour draining out of him by inches. It's such a fucking relief, he has another shot in its honor. At this point in the tour, he always almost forgets why he has the greatest job in the world. Nights like this make him remember, and he has another shot in honor of that. The greatest. Bar none.

He downs the shots and looks around the room. Sisky and Butcher are playing some elaborate game that involves shooting bottle caps at each other's faces. Tony and Ryland are playing pool with Alex and Chiz, and Mike's about half sure that there's enough mutual hustling and double-crossing going on there that it could be a Scorsese movie. He grins, picturing his idiot friends in a heist movie, and feels the slow spread of the booze through his system. The heat in his stomach feels good, familiar. Maybe he should be drunk more. That could be the answer to all of the problems anywhere. He'll run that idea by Bill.

Thinking of Bill makes him look for Bill, glancing around the room for a skinny ass and shiny hair. He spots him down at the end of the bar, one hand curled loosely around a bottle and the other pushing his hair back off his face. He's looking up at Gabe, who's leaning in to talk in his ear. For a minute Mike's really struck, looking at them. They're like...art, the lines and angles of their bodies, the way they lean into each other, relate to each other, the way they...complement. They don't _fit_ , exactly, but they resonate. Like a chord.

Gabe reaches out and rubs his fingers over the back of Bill's neck, and Bill melts under it, arches into the touch like a cat. Mike blinks rapidly and takes another swallow of his beer. He's seen Gabe touch Bill a million times, he's seen Bill _react_ a million times. He's pretty sure they all must have been exactly like that, so how come he feels like he's never seen it before?

Gabe smiles, and it's a _weird_ smile, gentle and sharp-edged at once. Bill says something that makes Gabe's hand curve around the back of his neck more solidly. Even from across the room, Mike can tell he's squeezing gently, and that Bill's reacting to that, too, in that same not-new-but-new way. Mike reaches to touch his own neck in an involuntary echo.

Bill nods and pushes his bottle away as Gabe steps back to let him get to his feet. They walk out of the bar not quite touching, but with that same sense of resonance. Mike can almost hear them in his head.

He kills his own drink and looks away. They're gone, they've gone off together, and he doesn't feel a fucking thing. Not a flicker of relief, not even a little jump of optimism. This isn't going to fix anything and he can't pretend it is. They're in a fucking holding pattern, and it's just going to play out over and over again unless something really _changes_. Or maybe something breaks.

"Fuck _all_ of this shit," he says, getting up and only weaving a little on his feet. Now that's something to be fucking proud of. "Somebody give me a stick or a drink. I don't care which." The guys look at him with raised eyebrows, and he points at them defiantly, wishing he didn't love any one of them too much to wipe the looks off their faces. "I sincerely, truly, in all ways do not give a shit."  
*****  
William's shaking so hard he can't control his limbs, and he almost falls over when Gabe steps back. He only catches himself because his shoulder hits the edge of the bed, his head smacking against the mattress a beat later as momentum carries the weight of his skull forward. He cries out, more in surprise than hurt, his system too overloaded on sharp, directed pain to process the two impacts as anything more than white noise.

"Easy." Gabe's voice is low and steady, warm, and William turns his head toward it instinctively. Gabe's hands catch him under the arms, drawing him up off the floor and back against Gabe's body. "Easy, baby. I've got you. Just breathe."

William shakes his head, blind and stubborn and fighting for the breath to speak. His throat is aching, raw from his own muffled shouts and bruised from the sweet pressure of the collar that Gabe had made tighter and tighter until William's whole world went white around the edges and black at the center.

"For me, William," Gabe says, pressing a kiss to his hair and guiding him up and into the bed. He lays him out on his stomach, then stretches out next to him, his hand resting solidly on the center of William's back. "Just breathe for me."

Obeying Gabe is so much easier than arguing right now, like the difference between fighting the tide and just letting it wash him in to shore. He closes his eyes and breathes, shallow at first and then steadying, and his heart slows in tandem. He starts sorting things out, mentally, piece by piece, separating his throat from his shoulder from the hand-smack bruises on his ass and his thighs and the bite marks across his back. He can map each pain as a glowing red spot on an imaginary map of his body, the color and heat of each one reaching out from an epicenter toward the others until everything but the top of his head is flushed and sore.

Gabe's hand rubs in slow, small circles, and William gasps as it crosses a bite mark. "Sorry," Gabe says, and presses a kiss to his shoulder. "Look at me a sec?" William turns his head and opens his eyes, blinking slowly until Gabe's face comes into focus. Gabe's smiling a little. "There you are. Okay. You need some water or something?"

William shakes his head, mesmerized for a minute by the way a few of Gabe's curls are stuck down to his forehead with sweat. The light is bright off his skin, his eyes are dark, and Gabe is _beautiful_ like this, in a completely different way than he was ten minutes ago when he was a fucking angel of wrath coming down to tear all the bad out of William and leave him empty and hollow and with a chance to fill in the space with something better. It makes William a little dizzy, thinking about the two different Gabes existing so close to each other. He isn't sure which one he wants more.

"You're okay." Gabe kisses his forehead, and William closes his eyes again, fighting a sudden rush of heat, feelings that he doesn't want to look at closely because whatever they are, there's nothing that can be done about them. What he has is what he has for a reason. He isn't going to waste his time and energy fighting for things that aren't going to be, that aren't _meant_ to be.

"Talk to me?" This isn't an order, it's a question and a request. _Would you please talk to me?_ and _Can you physically talk to me?_ , at once, without a nudge toward a correct answer. Half of William aches to answer anyway, to pour out his heart and be petted and told it's okay, he's good, they'll fix everything that hurts and aches and wears him down to ashes from the inside. They'll fix it.

The rest of him knows it can't be done and that lying hurts less than them both being smacked coldly with the truth.

He shakes his head a little and presses closer to Gabe, burrowing into the warm arc of his body. Gabe will assume he means he can't talk, he's too overwhelmed or his throat hurts too much. And Gabe won't press him, because right now Gabe's entire focus in the universe is not pressing him any farther toward the edges, but guiding him back to the center, to himself.

"Okay." Gabe presses another kiss to his forehead. "That's fine. We'll talk in the morning. Right now, we're good. You're good. So fucking good, my William."

The possessive sends a shudder down William's spine, and he closes his eyes tighter, fighting not to react outwardly. He can hear curses and laughter from the parking lot; the others must just be coming out of the bar. They won't come looking; nobody bothers with any curiosity about him and Gabe. He doesn't know if any of them even wonder, anymore.

He hears Mike shouting, bawling out Sisky for some infraction of the rules of a made-up parking-lot game. He thinks Mike might wonder, sometimes, but he won't ever ask. William has faith in that; relies on it, even. Mike is a solid wall that William slams against and throws sparks off of and can't burn down whatever he tries. If that ever changes, the whole world will shift on its axis.  
**  
William is pretty sure that the last show of the tour is going to be pretty close to perfect. He feels like the ground is actually there under his feet, like he can breathe, like he's _sane_. Maybe it'll last this time. Maybe he can hang on to it tightly enough. He just has to memorize this feeling, and keep it, and he won't need Gabe very often at all.

He tells himself that before the show, when he's checking himself in the mirror and the others are mocking him. They can always tell when he feels better, when it's safe to stop keeping their distance, and they come tumbling all over him like a bunch of puppies. Happy, drunk puppies with stupid senses of humor and a tendency to be _mean_.

He can give back as good as he gets, and he does, cursing and calling them names and laughing. It takes him a little while, caught up in the noisy give-and-take, to notice that Mike isn't playing along. He's sitting over on the far side of the dressing room, frowning down at a magazine and sometimes rubbing at his hands, working his fingers against his opposite palm in a nervous pre-show tic that William's always waiting for him to lose.

Part of him wants to go over there, or yell at him, or do something else to drag Mike over and into the circle of the rest of the band. But Mike seems to be going out of his way not to engage, and the others are giving him his space, so for once William goes along. He watches Mike out of the corner of his eye, but he leaves him alone.

When it gets closer to showtime, circling the room in search of one more bit of clothing or shaking off the last restless energy, he catches Mike's wrist, squeezing lightly until Mike looks at him. "Hey," he says softly, rubbing his thumb over the curve of bone. "Gonna be a good show tonight."

Mike smiles at him, an odd little twist of his mouth that isn't his usual grin at all. "Yeah. Good show." He gets his hand free before William can hold on harder, before he can say _what the fuck, Carden?_ or pull him into a hug or...anything. He just tugs his wrist free and moves off across the room, shoving Sisky into a wall and grabbing Butcher in a headlock.

And then the shouting and cursing and shoving starts up again, and it's so close to being completely fucking normal that William blinks a few times, expecting his vision to clear. Nothing changes, and he's left with that slight unsettled feeling of something being not _quite_ right up until they run out onto the stage.

It's better once they're performing. Everything always is. At one point he steps over to Mike's side of the stage and moves to lean into him, and he's half-afraid that Mike isn't going to be there. He'll turn away, or he'll step away, and William will fall into an empty space. He's never been afraid of that before. It's never even entered his mind. But tonight, his breath catches a little, and he almost misses a phrase.

But Mike's there. He doesn't move, doesn't give an inch. William leans into him and takes a deeper breath and sings his heart out. Nothing to be afraid of. He should have known.  
**  
It doesn't last, of course.

When they come off tour he still feels like he's bubbling over with energy and ideas, like there's something electric under his skin. They're taking two weeks apart, and he spends the whole time writing, pacing his apartment and throwing everything he has onto the paper. Three-quarters of it ends up in the trash on second reading, but that's okay, there's more to replace it and it feels like there always will be. He's on fire. It's going to be their best album yet, and he assaults everyone he knows with texts and e-mails telling them so.

It's _so_ good for the first few days, so fucking good. He doesn't sleep much, but it doesn't feel like he needs it. All he needs is the words, and the hints of melodies that he scribbles down along with the lyrics. The others will take those vague beginnings and turn them into something he might not even recognize by the end, but the first bit of the skeleton, that's his. They'll make fun of him and call him a control freak and that's fine, he just needs to know that the songs are _his_ , first, before they're _theirs_. God, this part is magic, this is why he ever wanted this in the first place.

The first sign that it won't last this time is when he begins to wonder if it will.

Electricity under his skin turns into itching, unease, restlessness. His own handwriting starts looking alien and illegible when he comes back for the second readings, and when he can decipher the words they're always stiff and awkward, mannered and _wrong_. He's still not sleeping and suddenly he craves it, lying in the dark for hours with nothing in his head. If the music was still there, he wouldn't care that he was awake, but there's nothing, until it gets replaced by the fear that there won't ever be anything else again.

And from there, from the first hint of fear, it's just a short slide, two steps backward but they're steps the size of a fucking football field. It isn't _fair_ , how every time he feels good, every time he feels like he's moving forward, he ends up right back where he began.

He has a list, in his head. He's never written it down, though he could at a moment's notice. All of the people who ever wanted him and then didn't, loved him and then stopped. There's a sub-list of people who wanted him but not _enough_. He runs through them in his head, name by name and face by face, and he's self-aware enough to know that the common thread is him. Nothing else unites every case. Not a fucking thing except William Beckett, who never quite fits, who is never quite good _enough_ , however good he might seem to be at the beginning.

He's got no follow-through, that's the problem. He throws out another dozen pages of song lyrics and scrawls that across the wall. No follow-throug whatsoever.

He almost misses their first meeting when the two-week vacation is up. They're supposed to meet at two o'clock, but he hadn't slept at all and decides to try a nap at ten, then wakes up at one-thirty with a pounding headache. "Fuck," he hisses at himself, scrambling into his clothes and throwing open the refrigerator door. His kitchen has apparently magically emptied itself while he was working, because he doesn't remember eating everything but it's definitely _gone_. Fuck it. He grabs his notebook off the table and bolts out the door.

"Fifteen minutes late," Butcher intones when he comes through the door. They're all staring at him, and for a moment these aren't his best friends, his brothers, and he isn't a frontman at all. It's like he's never seen them before, and his breath freezes in his throat with the sickening awareness that if he tries to speak he's going to stutter.

"He knows how to make an entrance, ladies and gentlemen," Siska says with a dramatic flourish.

"Who are you calling a lady?" Chiz asks, which leads to dirty jokes and pulls everyone's eyes off Bill, for which he is profoundly grateful. He gets his jacket off and starts flipping through his notebook, trying to find the song he'd made a point of setting aside as the one to start with. It was one he got down in those first couple glorious days of productivity, when he was still _good_ at this, and it--

It was in a completely different notebook, because this one is full of the shit he's been writing in the last couple horrible days of uselessness. Half of the pages are covered in giant X's and block-letter "NO"s.

He stares at the words and fights back a hysterical giggle. _No, no, no_. No is right. No use, no talent, no-thing to see here, just the inevitable train wreck of the next album, the end of their contract, the end of _everything_ \--

He catches himself and closes his eyes, raking his fingers through his hair. That might be just a _bit_ dramatic. He can do this. He's done this before. The lyrics are sitting in his apartment on the table, it's not like he left them on a fucking airplane this time.

"Well?"

He looks up, startled, and Mike's smirking at him from the other side of the room. It's only been two weeks but somehow Mike looks different, sharper around the edges, colder around the eyes. Looking at him makes William want to stand up straighter and be a little bit wary. On his toes.

"Well, what?" he asks, tapping the notebook against his thigh.

"Well, what have you got for us, Superman?" Mike nods at the notebook and tips his chair forward, balancing it on two legs. "Let's hear the poetic shit so we can try to make it something people actually want to hear."

"Fuck you." It's automatic, it's muscle memory. This is how it works. He and Mike crash into each other, throwing sparks, and the kinetic energy turns the wheels to power the album. This is what makes it go.

Shit, he forgot that it feels _exciting_.

"That's what you've got? Fuck me? That's not a _song_ , Bill." Mike's voice is thick with exaggerated patience, laced with scorn. "Please tell me you've got something better than that."

Based on the flickers of resignation that cross the others' faces before they find excuses to look away, they all remember that William swore up and down it was going to be different this time. The whole process would be different. _He_ would be different. No fighting, no screaming, no sparks fueling this one. They'd try writing an album like grown-ups, if only for the novelty.

Chalk it up as another failure on his part, because this is the only way this is going to get done. He pushes, Mike pushes back, they both keep going and somehow nothing ever breaks. Maybe that's a step backward, too, but fuck, it's a _comfortable_ one. He knows how to do this.

He'd say thank you, but that would be against the rules.  
**  
Mike shows up at midnight with a bottle of whiskey. After the practice they had that day, William seriously considers not letting him in.

"It's good shit," Mike says through the door. "I splurged. Stop being such a goddamn baby and let me in."

William turns the deadbolt. "I thought I was a self-absorbed, psychotic moron, not a baby."

"You're both."

William sighs and opens the door. "And you're an asshole." Mike shoves the brown bag into his hand and shoulders him aside as he comes in. "What do you want?"

"To get drunk."

"You can do that on your own."

"Yeah, well, I thought about it." He takes his jacket off and tosses it on the couch, staring down at it for a moment. He's standing between William and the light, so it hurts to look at him. "I also thought about saying fuck this shit and moving to North Dakota."

William blinks. "What would you do in North Dakota?"

"I don't know. I was thinking of being a cowboy."

"You don't know how to be a cowboy. You're like the least potentially competent cowboy anywhere ever."

"Wrong. You, Pete, and Brendon are all less competent."

William can't really argue with that. He shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs, feeling vaguely defensive for no good reason and not enjoying it one fucking bit. "So you came over here to tell me you're quitting the band and becoming a cowboy?"

"No." Mike turns away from the couch and walks back to him, snatching the bottle out of his hands with a sharp enough gesture that William flinches back, expecting a punch. Adrenaline spikes and he blinks hard to clear his eyes, swallowing a sudden rush of heat and excitement.

"I'm not going to let the fact that you're a histrionic princess drive me out of my band." Mike tosses the bag aside and goes into the kitchen. William can hear him slamming cupboard doors and bites his lip to keep from telling him that the stuff in the sink is clean.

"It's not your band," he says instead.

"It's as much mine as it is yours."

"Is not."

"Jesus, you're a _toddler_." Mike comes out of the kitchen with the bottle under his arm and a full mug in each hand. He shoves one at William hard enough that the liquid splashes down over his fingers, leaving them sticky against the surface. It's purple, advertising the wonders of Idaho, from the days when they collected souvenirs of where they'd been. He takes a deep, defiant swallow and closes his eyes against the burn.

"You're a whiny, impossible little _pussy_ ," Mike says.

"You came all the way over here to get drunk and insult me?" William keeps his eyes closed, watching the ghosts of colors dance behind his lids. He's half tempted to tell Mike to add a spanking and he'd be providing William's ideal Saturday night.

It wouldn't work, though. He can't surrender to Mike. He would fight back, fight all the way to the floor. That's the way they are, the way they've always been.

Something aches in the pit of his stomach. He takes another swallow of whiskey and tries to will it away.

"I came here to try to fucking lay this all out and fix it, Bill. Isn't this exhausting as shit for you? Because it sure is for me."

William shrugs slightly. "It's the process, Mike. Same as it always is."

"It's _not_ the same as always. It's like ten times worse."

William frowns. "No, it isn't. Do you even remember last time? You and Tom at each others throats and Adam trying to find a place to hide and--"

"And you being an unbearable fucking bastard? Yeah, I remember that. But you weren't the walking _dead_."

"I flew to LA and had suicidal impulses. Were you in some different band?"

Mike throws his free hand up, turning away and taking another drink. "Fine. Whatever. Maybe I'm the one who's changed."

That idea makes William's stomach twist again, worse. It takes more whiskey to settle it. "I don't think so."

"Oh, well, if _you_ don't think so. God forbid Bill Beckett ever be wrong."

Another flash of anger, hot and sweet and giving him something to focus on other than the empty space in his head where the fucking fear lives. "What is your problem?"

"I'm not the one with the problem," Mike says. William's hands curl into fists at his sides.

"You just said you're the one who's changed."

"Yeah, and you told me I was wrong." Mike shrugs and takes another drink, watching William over the edge of the mug with sharp eyes. They're a little too detached for the things Mike is saying, a little too cool. William wants to scream with frustration, and digs his fingers into his palms hard enough to see bright sparks.

Mike is _toying_ with him. Trying to provoke him. It's all a fucking game.

"Maybe I've grown out of this shit," Mike says. "Maybe I've grown up enough to see all of your bullshit, and realize how stupid this all is, and just get sick of it."

William starts to smile. He doesn't mean to, and from the unease that flickers across Mike's face, he wasn't expecting it. William can guess what Mike was expecting; he's supposed to be stunned and off-balance and moving ever closer to breaking down in tears on Mike's shoulder, so Mike can pet him and mock him and think he's lanced out the poison enough that tomorrow they can write something.

It's a hell of a lot more complicated than that this time. Or it always has been, and this is just the first time William's going to be honest about it. He hasn't changed, he never does. Mike is wrong again, reliable as a clock. Mike is the same, and William has changed, and the change is that he's not lying anymore.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" There's uncertainty under the surface now, in Mike's voice and his face. This is too easy, like once William made the connection in his head things started falling into place like magic. William knows that Mike doesn't like feeling less than in control. It pisses him off, and William knows what to do once Mike's pissed off, can play him like a finely-tuned guitar. He's been pissing Mike off for years.

"God, I think you've really finally fucking snapped, Beckett." Mike takes another drink, then steps back as William moves in close, into his space. "What the fuck?"

"You've grown out of this? You've got to be kidding me." William smacks the mug out of Mike's hand, sending it to the floor with a splash. "You never grow up. You never change. You're the same as you were when we were in high school. The exact same stupid jackass prick kid."

Mike's eyes widen a little, then narrow, and William wants so badly to laugh. He isn't supposed to fight back. He's supposed to smack up against Mike, throw some sparks, and be satisfied.

Sparks aren't going to be enough tonight. He's getting a charge from tearing up the script, though.

"Fuck off," Mike says. "You spilled that all over my shoes, you asshole."

"I don't care. I don't care about your shoes, and I don't care about your _feelings_ , I don't care that you came over here to whine and bitch at me about how I make things _difficult_. Difficult for who? Nobody else is complaining."

"Because they're afraid they might complain their way right out of the band."

"I'm not the one who throws around ultimatums and forces that kind of decision. That would be you."

There's no guilt in Mike's eyes, and that's something William's relied on before. When Mike makes a decision in cold blood, he never second-guesses and he never looks back. He locks down his emotions and wipes out the traces that anything else ever existed. He's like a hit man.

William can't let him go cold right now, though. He needs to keep Mike in this.

"We both decided," Mike says. "We _all_ did."

"No. You decided and threw down a gauntlet, drew a line in the sand. Him or you, and I don't know why you were so sure we would pick you."

That does it, he knows as soon as he says it, even as he's stunned that he _did_ say it, that the words actually made their way out of his mouth. This is the heavy shit, the dark parts nobody looks at too closely, the skeletons that are much better off behind you and moldering than looking you in the eye and wrapping their fingers around your throat.

Mike actually draws in a sharp breath, like he's been hit, before a flush starts rising in his face and his hands curl into fists. William has him. All he has to do is focus and let it go, like throwing a pitch right down the center.

"I don't know why we _did_ pick you. It's not like you contribute anything he didn't. Except I guess it is useful to have an attack dog. My very own playground bully to push people around."

"What the _fuck_ , Bill?" Mike's voice is tight, angry, an edge of something ugly just underneath the surface.

William knows how to scratch through and set it free. It's less words than tone that get to Mike, every time, easy. William says his next piece with a little sneer and an edge of scorn. "It does get a little boring hearing you say the same four or five things over and over again, though. At least Tom had hobbies he'd talk about sometimes." Mike shoves him, sending him stumbling back a few paces and spilling his own whiskey to the floor. "That's right. Just like that. You should bark, too. Really finish off the picture."

"Fuck you," Mike hisses, and shoves him again, harder. William loses his balance, grabbing at Mike's arm instinctively to catch himself, and Mike swings his fist, clipping his shoulder rather than full-on punching him. It's still enough to knock him to the floor. "I put up with all of your diva princess bullshit, I keep everybody else off your back, I bust my ass worrying about yours, trying to keep you from freezing up or going off the deep fucking end or fucking killing yourself because you're a sensitive fucking artist who can't deal with reality or whatever the _fuck_ your problem is--"

"Is that what you call it? Everybody else calls it screaming and swearing and being a fucking psycho because you're too goddamn stupid to act like an adult about anything."

He only has time to think that he _should_ regret that before Mike is on him, his weight crashing down on William's body hard enough to knock the wind out of him just as his fist connects with William's jaw. William makes a choked noise--barely one at all, since he can't breathe--and tries to curl up, twist away, but Mike's pinning him down and he can't. He can't move and he can't think and Mike's hitting him again, over and over, gasping out "Fuck you, _fuck you_ " in a voice that William barely recognizes, raw and rough and furious.

And the thing is, it hurts and it's too much, he went too far and it's scary as hell, but it's also _exactly_ what he was trying to make happen, exactly what he knew he could get if he pushed Mike hard enough and hit all of his buttons just so. The smug satisfaction mixed with the adrenaline rush is making it almost right, almost fucking _perfect_ , exactly the kind of wreckage and destruction he's been looking for all along. He has to laugh, even though it's a waste of air. He looks up at Mike between punches and he laughs.

Mike's hands close around his throat before he can say thank you, but that just makes it even better, even sweeter, and if he could say anything as his vision starts to gray, it would be _see, you always did know me best_.  
*****  
It takes Mike four tries to get his apartment door open, the key fighting his fingers and fumbling against the lock until he actually sobs with relief when the bolt turns.

 _Fuck. Fuck._

He kicks the door closed again behind him and stumbles toward the kitchen, or more accurately, away from the door. He isn't quite sure what he's looking for--a drink, a place to hide--but he wants to be away from the hallway, the elevator, the lobby that leads to the street that leads back to Bill's place.

 _Fuck_.

His chest hurts with every breath and his stomach heaves, like he's either going to be sick here on the kitchen floor or maybe just going to die, his heart just plain going to fucking explode and kill him on the spot. They'll find his body spread out on the tile like--

\--splash of an image behind his eyes, Bill on the floor, carpeting not tile but spread out like that, all still like that, red marks around his throat and that sickening uncountable stretch of time where Mike couldn't tell if his chest was moving or not--

He grabs the first bottle he sees on the counter and twiste the top off, swallowing straight and shuddering all the way down. He hears himself make a sound, somewhere between choking and sobbing, and he takes another drink to chase it down, keep it inside where it belongs.

\--Bill's chest moves, he breathes, he coughs and moves a little, head turning to the side and Christ, the markson his throat, red and the shape of Mike's hands, and those will blossom black, they have to, they'll bruise like a fucking banner, a signature of who did this, who did it, who--

" _Fuck_."

He puts the bottle down and misses the counter, sending it crashing to the floor and alcohol splashing into his shoes and jeans for the second time tonight. He's booze-soaked, literally and figuratively. It doesn't feel like enough of an excuse.

\--Bill's eyes are shut, his mouth twisted, his lashes against his cheeks and his skin flushed red and that's when Mike runs, when he looks at Bill's face and realizes his eyes aren't open yet, that if he runs now he won't have to look Bill in the eye--

He looks down and his phone is in his hand, like some kind of evil magic put it there. He's vaguely aware that he's in shock, the way everything feels like it's taking place in a faraway country and maybe under a deep layer of warm water. It doesn't matter. Just because reality hasn't caught up yet doesn't mean it won't, and that things aren't going to shatter like glass when it does. Another broken bottle.

He scrolls through his contacts, hand shaking. Saporta, the S's, he files by last name because he knows too many Andys, too many Adams and Alexes. The A's were killing him.

"The fuck do you want?" Gabe yells by way of answering. "You in Ohio, baby? You coming to join the afterparty, Santi?"

Mike can feel his throat working, his mouth, but words aren't coming out, nothing's happening. More broken glass, this time in his throat, cutting him off.

"Hello? Carden? God, fucking asshole, pocket-dialing me."

"Gabe."

"Oh, there you are. Asshole Smurf. What's up? You wanna party?"

"Gabe." His voice is thin, shaky, weak. Whatever magic got him to make the call, it's abandoned him now that he needs to actually say something. "Gabe, something happened."

"Are you stoned, you dumb fuck?"

"Something happened to Bill."

And yeah, like he knew it would be, that's like flipping a switch. That makes a completely different voice come through the phone. "What happened? Is he okay?"

"I..."

"Carden. Is he okay?"

"I don't know."

"Where is he?"

"At his place." Air feels wrong in Mike's throat, too thin, like even if he breathes in all that he can it won't fill up his lungs. He'll still feel pinched and empty. "He was...when I left he was..."

"When you _left_? What the fuck?"

"We had a fight." His stomach heaves again, churns, and he reaches blindly for the edge of the counter, gripping as hard as he can. "We had a fight, and he...and I..."

This silence makes him dizzy, makes him want to confess to fill the space, but the air won't support words.

"Shit," Gabe mutters. "Shit." He says something away from the phone, muffled and unreal, and Mike forces himself to keep breathing through the nausea and the way he sort of thinks he might be going blind. The world's all gray at the edges.

"Get back over there."

He shakes his head wildly, stupidly, gripping the phone too tight. "I can't."

"Get your stupid ass back over there, Carden."

"I can't."

"You stupid--" Gabe cuts himself off and says something else off the phone. Mike thinks the answering voice is Ryland's, something about the tempo and the tone. He reaches for another bottle from the counter, but his fingers can't manage the cap.

"Okay," Gabe says, his voice changing again, this time to something cold. Mike jumps, knocking the bottle over on the countertop. "I'll call Adam. Or Andy. Or somebody else who isn't a stupid useless fuck. I don't care, I'll just get somebody over there to check on him, and I'll have them call me, talk to _me_ , because you...You do whatever you need to do, I could give less of a shit. I'm getting in a car right now, I'll be there in...four hours? Fuck that, Ryland, I'll do it in three."

Mike nods, stupidly still, letting his legs give in and drop him to the floor.

"I'm gonna find out what the story is," Gabe says, "and here's a hint, if any bad shit happens to William because you fucking ran? I'm going to make you wish you were dead. And then I'm going to kill you."

Gabe hangs up with what feels like a bang. Mike lets his phone slip out of his hand and buries his face in the crook of his arm, pressed against his knees.

 _Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._  
**  
When he opens his eyes again, the world's blurry and bright with the evil of morning sunlight, and Gabe's face is six inches from his. Mike blinks until it comes into focus--cold, dark, narrowed eyes, rightfuckingthere--and then promptly chokes on the breath he's trying to take.

"Hi," Gabe says.

Mike jerks back, slamming the side of his head against the cabinets--apparently he'd fallen asleep or passed out or whatever right there on the kitchen floor. He groans and closes his eyes again, trying to will himself away from the sharp pain in his head and the reality of last night.

Last night. His life. The reality of _either_ , really.

"Sit up and drink some fucking water," Gabe says, and his voice is...not quite pleasant, but close to it, in a way that would throw all of Mike's suspicions into high alert and defense mode, if he could physically manage it. That cannot possibly be right. Gabe cannot feel _pleasant_ toward him. Not after what he--

He opens his eyes again, staring up at Gabe, who's still staring down like a demented, judgmental gargoyle clinging to the side of a building and about to drop a rock on Mike's head. "What are you doing here?"

"Making sure you're in one piece."

"You're supposed to be with Bill."

"Yeah." Gabe folds himself up cross-legged. "He told me to come check on you."

Mike looks at him for a minute, processing that, forcing it through a couple of revolutions on the hamster wheel in his head. "He's okay?"

"Yeah. He's okay." Gabe picks at a hole in the knee of his jeans, then jabs Mike in the thigh. "Won't be singing anytime soon, but he's okay."

Mike nods a little, stiffly, and closes his eyes again, pressing his cheek against the floor. Bill is okay. He's pretty sure he should have a reaction to that other than an overwhelming desire to just let his brain and body shut down altogether, but he sort of doesn't.

Gabe pokes him again. "He's mortified. And, like, panicky. You know."

Mike turns his face against the floor completely, pressing down until his nose aches. He doesn't know. He doesn't know shit.

"You two," Gabe says. There's something in his voice that Mike can't even begin to parse, something layered with meaning like those looks Gabe and Bill give each other, something in another language. "You two fuckers have so much to talk about."

Mike shakes his head, which grinds his nose down against the floor some more, enough to make tears stand in his eyes. "Got _nothing_ to talk about."

"You are wrong, wrong, wrong, my little friend." There's an edge to Gabe's voice now, one that says Mike isn't going to win this, but fuck him, Mike is an adult and he's got nothing--nothing--to say to Bill.

He says so, and Gabe's fingers curl easily in his hair and drag him up into a sitting position.

"Carden," Gabe says, sweet and dangerous like the guy in a van handing out candy. "I don't think you're following me here. William told me what happened, and I _get_ it, I do, which is why I'm not bashing your face in right now. I am an understanding guy and he does not communicate for shit and you're both dumber than a box of rocks when it comes to feelings and shit. Which is hilarious for a bunch of reasons. But my point is. I am willing to be understanding to a point, but William is my boy, and you choked the shit out of him, and if you don't talk to him, sort this stuff out, and goddamn well deal with it, I am going to put your head through the living-room window."

Mike manages a deep breath, setting his jaw against the pain of Gabe yanking his hair. "I just woke up, asshole, I cannot follow your fucking speeches."

Gabe casually smacks Mike's head against the cabinet. "Yeah, right, _I'm_ the asshole. I'm gonna give you fifteen minutes to get cleaned up. Don't piss me off, Mikey, I swear to God."

Mike is so close to being pissed. He can feel a lot of anger sort of sitting in his chest, just _waiting_ , easy access. But he can't manage it. It's like he burned his hands last night, and the thought of handling something hot right now has him flinching and gun-shy.

Fuck. Fine. He can go over there and tell Bill to his face that they've got nothing to talk about. That's fine. That'll be good.

"Fucking let go of me," he says, and Gabe does, settling back and gesturing politely toward the kitchen door. Asshole. Jesus Christ. Mike drags himself to his feet and goes, telling himself over and over that it won't take long, it'll be easy, and it's not going to make any difference to see Bill's face. He's made up his mind.  
**  
Gabe delivers him to Bill's door and makes a vague promise/threat combination that he'll be back in half an hour and if they haven't sorted shit out, he's going to play couples counselor and make them hug.

Mike hates Gabe Saporta more than any human being he has ever met.

Gabe stands there and stares until Mike knocks on the door, and even then only backs slowly toward the elevator as they hear the locks turn. Mike flips him off and Gabe returns the gesture with both hands as the door swings open.

Bill looks at Gabe, then at Mike, and rolls his eyes. History would suggest that he says something bitchy, too, but Mike honestly can't say, because he's staring at the marks on Bill's throat and his blood's roaring in his ears too loudly to hear anything else.

Holy fuck. He did that. He did _that_. To Bill.

He jumps when Bill touches him; just a tentative brush of fingers over his wrist, but he wasn't expecting it and it jolts through him like a shock. "Mike," Bill says softly, and Mike's stomach twists. Bill's voice is rough, hoarse-- _choked_ \--and fuck, he did that, he--

"Come inside," Bill says. He steps back, clearing the doorway, and Mike obeys because he doesn't know what else to do. If he bolts, Gabe will just hunt him down again, and this time he'll be mad.

"Are you okay?" Bill asks once they're inside. Mike stares at him, utterly lost for a moment, then starts to laugh. He can hear the edge in the sound, sharp and hysterical and not quite sane, and he knows it's going to piss Bill off because very little pisses Bill off more than being laughed at, but he can't help it.

Bill shoves his hands in his pockets and waits, his mouth twisted in a mixture of amusement and irritation. "Whenever you're done," he says, and Mike shakes his head, still laughing as he turns away.

"Am I all right. You're asking if _I'm_ all right."

"Yes."

"Why the fuck are you asking me that?"

He won't look at Bill, he can't, but he can just picture the way Bill's looking at him now, wide-eyed and earnest and just wanting to _share_. "I know I scared you."

Mike shakes his head and moves over to the window, staring down at the street. "No."

"Yes. You were scared that you hurt me."

"I was scared that I fucking killed you."

Bill takes a shaky breath and a step toward him--Mike can hear it--and he puts his hand up in a sharp gesture of _stop_ before he can do any more.

"I'm fine, Mike. I'm okay."

"That's not the point."

"Yes, it is."

"No, it's _not_." Mike's voice breaks, and he punches the window frame, wincing when the glass rattles. "I choked you. I _attacked_ you. I hurt you, and that's _not_ fucking okay, Bill."

"It wasn't your fault."

Mike does turn, then, and stares at him, not quite sure he actually heard that. "How is it not my fault? I did it."

Bill is looking at him tight-lipped and white-faced, his expression set in that "I am utterly serious" look that he usually reserves for defending questionable lyrics or a stage set-up that makes no fucking sense. "I made you do it."

"Jesus Christ." Mike moves to the couch and drops onto it before his legs have a chance to just give out on him entirely. "This is some kind of...Lifetime movie, Stockholm syndrome abuse thing where you think you deserved it and I'm, like, brainwashing you. Shouldn't that take a hell of a lot longer to kick in? Or, like, have we really been that fucked-up all along, since we were kids, and I didn't even _notice_ because you really are that annoying and I'm really that dense or--"

"Mike!" Bill throws his hands in the air. "Stop talking." He crosses the room and kneels down in front of Mike before Mike can tell him to stay away, then grabs Mike's knees. "Let me talk, okay?"

Mike stares down at William's long fingers flexing against his jeans. "Fine."

"I baited you." Bill's voice is low and intense, with a fierce edge to it that makes Mike want to look at him. But he can't, he just can't. "I deliberately pushed your buttons, I pissed you off on purpose, I wanted you to come after me."

Mike takes a slow breath and shakes his head. "That doesn't make any sense."

Bill sighs, ducking his head. Mike can see his teeth worrying his lower lip, and his cheeks flush dark. If he wasn't on his knees, Bill would be pacing back and forth and fidgeting and talking with his hands until Mike wanted to slap them still. "Sometimes I...well. More than sometimes, I guess. I have a...a thing, I..."

Mike forces himself to keep breathing slowly, through clenched teeth, not to move or react. Just fucking wait.

"I like things rough." Bill's voice drops to a whisper, his fingers still sliding in slow circles against Mike's knees. "I like being smacked around. I like being choked. I...there's a release in that, for me. It gets me out of my head." He makes a soft sound that's not quite a laugh. "It lets me be free, for a little while. Free from all the bullshit in my head."

Mike pushes Bill's hands off of him and replaces them with his own, digging his fingers in hard. His chest feels weird, too tight, and his head is spinning enough that he has to close his eyes. "You and Gabe. That's what you do. He hurts you."

Bill doesn't answer, but the fact that he doesn't say no says everything.

"It's a sex thing."

"Not...not exactly. I mean, yes, but--"

Mike stands up abruptly and Bill falls back on his hands to get out of his way. "Were you trying to get me to fuck you, too?"

"What?"

"Hit you, choke you, fuck you? So I'd leave here thinking I..." His hands are shaking. he shoves them in his pockets to make them stop.

"Mike. No."

"It's a sex thing, and you and I don't have sex." His hair is falling down over his face, and he wants to push it back but he doesn't trust his hands. "We're friends."

"We're more than that." Bill is looking up at him with those eyes, so fucking earnest, and Mike isn't sure if he wants to scream or cry. "We're brothers, Mike."

"You used me." Bill's eyes get wider and Mike shakes his head had, not done. "You wanted to...to feel better and Gabe wasn't here, so you got me to do it. Right? I'm an attack dog and you yanked my chain." He swallows down hot stinging bile. "Right?"

"You're not..."

"Right?"

Bill nods slightly, a bare movement of his chin. "Yes."

"You didn't tell me you needed something. You didn't ask."

"No."

"And I...lived up to your expectations." Mike nods now, and looks away. "I'm going to go."

"Don't."

"I can't be here right now."

"Mike, please."

"I actually...I can't..." He shakes his head. "I won't be around. Finish writing without me."

"What? No."

"I can't fucking do this, Bill. I have to...I have to get the fuck out of here."

"We can't write the album without you. I can't write without you. That isn't how it works."

"I can't _be here_." He's shouting and it makes him flinch as well as Bill. "I can't." He moves to the door and thank God Bill didn't throw the locks again when they came inside, because he way he feels right now, he would've beaten himself bloody against the thing without ever getting it open.

Gabe's standing in the lobby when the elevator doors open. Mike shakes his head wildly, praying that for the first and only time in his life, Gabe will pay attention to somebody else.

Of course not. "Mike. Hey, hey, dude. Hey." Mike tries to dodge around him and Gabe catches his wrist, winding his fingers around it and gripping tight. "Hey, man. Talk to me."

Mike laughs sharp and ragged. "I am so done _talking_."

"So it didn't go so well."

"It..." Mike shakes his head and tries to pull his arm free. "I'm leaving."

"Let's get coffee."

"No." He shakes his head again, harder. "I have to get the fuck out of this town. I can't be here. I told him to finish the writing without me."

"Dude. You don't want to do that."

"I don't _want_ any of this. But I _can't be here_." He finally yanks his arm free. "Maybe I'll come back for recording. Maybe I won't. I don't know. I don't..."

Gabe's staring at him, his face carefully blank. His eyes, too, and Mike has always hated how Gabe can do that, can make himself completely unreadable at will.

"I don't know," he says again.

"I do." Gabe reaches for him again and Mike flinches back. Gabe lets his hand fall. "You two. You two...fucking idiots."

"Go to hell, Gabe."

"Sometimes dealing with you people, I think I'm already there." Gabe jabs his finger at Mike's chest. "Newsflash, Mikey. You're in love with him."

Mike stares at him. "No. I'm not."

"You really are."

"He's my friend."

"Because that's never happened in the history of the world. Friends falling in love with each other."

Mike tries to move past him. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

Gabe shoves him back. "I know some shit, Carden. I know I've been watching you two be in love with each other but completely incapable of getting your shit together or sorting your heads out for a really long goddamn time, and it's got to stop before _everyone_ involved goes crazy, including me."

"It doesn't have anything to do with you."

"The hell it doesn't. In case you haven't noticed, I love that idiot upstairs, too."

"Yeah, and that's completely different from him and me." Mike's voice almost cracks, and he digs his fingers into the palms of his hands, fighting it. "What you and him do, or are, or...or whatever, it's different. Completely."

Gabe pulls back an inch. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"You hurt him."

Gabe's eyes go flat again, his mouth pressing into a tight line. "Yeah. I do."

"I won't do that. I won't hurt him. Never again."

"I'm pretty sure he won't ask you to."

"Yeah. Obviously. He'll just trick me into it."

"He didn't do it on purpose."

"I don't fucking care." Mike drags his fingers through his hair and takes a shaky breath. "If you love him and you can give him the shit he wants, then why aren't you _with_ him?"

Gabe's teeth scrape slowly over his lower lip. "It's complicated."

"I bet it isn't."

Gabe glares at him, then shrugs slightly. "It's not that kind of love."

Mike nods. "I'm leaving."

"Yeah. Do that."

"I need to..."

"Yeah." Gabe looks at the elevator. "I'll make sure he's okay."

"Good."

"Get your head straightened out, Mikey."

Mike doesn't answer, and Gabe doesn't look back.  
*****  
It doesn't make any sense, but it's easier to hold himself together after everything's gone to shit.

Maybe it's because the thing he's most afraid of--losing someone else, having someone else walk out on him, or maybe it's pushing someone else away, he's never really been able to tell the difference--went and happened. Or maybe because the person he relies on to be there when he does fall apart isn't anymore. Or maybe he's just finally exhausted even himself.

Gabe calls him every night, from wherever he is. Some nights they just talk, check in and compare their days, and Gabe tells him to keep it together and it's going to be fine. He phrases it as an order, without room for question, and that helps. That's something solid.

Other nights Gabe manages to go off somewhere alone, or just takes the risk if William really needs it, and talks him off over the phone, voice low and hot and sharp-edged, words cool and and sliding in like knives to make up for the distance. It's not quite the thing William used to try to make himself not want, but it's close, it's so fucking close, Gabe's voice telling him what to do, telling him what he is. It's not having Gabe _there_ , but it's something.

During the day he cleans, he eats, he watches TV. He doesn't look at the songs they finished after Mike left. They're fine, they're good enough, they'll sound okay. It turns out he can write without Mike after all. It feels slightly wrong, but he has no idea how to tell if that's because it _is_ or if it's just because it's different.

The other guys are walking on glass around him, confused and whispering, not willing to ask yet. He doesn't know what he would tell them anyway. The songs are done and they're going into the studio soon, just days away now. That's something to hold onto, too, that apparently he does, in fact, know how to do this.

He digs his fingertips into all of the things he can hold onto, he clings to the barest edge, and it's just enough, just barely, just about.

He's called Mike twice, both times ringing away for what feels like a horribly long time before going to voicemail. He doesn't leave a message, just hangs up and rolls his phone between his fingers, staring down at the floor.

He _should_ leave a message. He should apologize, for what he did and for what he is, for how he behaved and the things he wants, for the things he said and the things he won't ever, ever say because he doesn't know the words for them, the things that hit deep in his head and his guts and twist together slow and dark until he feels like he's going to tear apart.

The micro and the macro, the immediate and the abstract. He should call and apologize for both, for everything.

Gabe tells him he's being stupid, that the only thing he should apologize for is provoking Mike instead of asking him. "Don't be sorry for who you are or what you want," he says, his voice warped and flattened by the distance and the phones. It would probably be easier to take him to heart and believe him if he was closer, if his voice was right. "William, baby, there's nothing wrong with you."

 _Then why does nobody want me enough to stay?_ is the immediate retort, but he bites his tongue to keep from answering, letting ambivalent silence fill the space instead.

"He owes you an apology, too." The note of frustration in Gabe's voice carries true even through the phones. "I mean, he's not a toddler, controlling your temper is a grown-up skill."

William doesn't answer that either, just presses his thumb against the inside of his opposite wrist and watches his shadow on the wall.

"You know what...to hell with you both," Gabe mutters, and hangs up. William nods slightly. Agreed.

He doesn't call Mike again. He tells Butcher to do it, to call and tell him the time and date they're starting to record and that if he's not there, they'll assume he's out and they'll find someone else. William isn't sure they'll survive that with sanity intact. Replacing guitarists as a concept is enough to make him break out in hives. Maybe they'll just have Chislett play everything. Or maybe they'll break up the band and William will get a job in a shoe store.

"Why can't you manifest depression like a normal person?" is Butcher's response when William lays out their options that way, in a monologue delivered while wearing only his boxers and a blanket, blocking his own doorway while Butcher stands in the hallway with pizza and beer the night before recording.

William squints at him. "How would that be, exactly?"

"Crying and eating." Butcher pokes him with the pizza box until William steps back and lets him in. "But that's too easy for you. You've gotta be a weirdo."

William clutches the blanket more tightly around his shoulders. "It's my superpower."

"Sure." Butcher sets the pizza and beer on the table and sits on the couch, forcibly placing William beside him. William doesn't fight it. "This time, though, Captain Dramarama, it's totally unnecessary."

"What do you mean?"

Butcher pops the top off a beer. "Well, Sisky's picking Mike up at the airport in, like...now, so he'll be there tomorrow."

"He came back?"

"Well, yeah. Why wouldn't he?"

William shrugs and huddles beneath his blanket again, suddenly very aware of all of his bare skin. It's like a switch got thrown in his head and suddenly the mundanities of the real world matter again. "No reason."

Butcher takes a drink, and William notices that he's holding the bottle very, very tightly. "You know, the rest of us are used to you two being completely fucking crazy, but that doesn't really make it any less annoying."

"Sorry."

"Someday we will kill and eat you both."

William blinks. "Okay."

"Just saying." Butcher sets his bottle down and stretches, his shoulders popping. "Look, man, none of us know what happened, and we don't need to. Actually, we don't even want to, because we're sort of afraid it might be contagious. But...not everything is the end of the fucking world, okay? Sometimes things are just a mistake, and you can fix it, and get over it, and move on."

William nods. "I've heard rumors about that."

"I promise, it's true. And it's awesome. And it makes life a lot easier on everybody else, in case you care."

William takes a piece of pizza and studies it for a moment, then carefully bites off the point. "I'll think about it."

"Awesome." Butcher bumps his shoulder against William's, and William bumps him back, taking a deep breath and another bite. "Rock on."  
**  
Mike walks into the studio like nothing's weird.

And that makes William think things might actually be _slightly_ less weird than he thought, because it pisses him off. He feels the familiar old hot rush of annoyance, the one that is purely Mike's, when he comes sauntering into the studio with his guitar case, laughing his stupid crazy laugh at some story Chiz is telling.

They're not even late. Sisky isn't there yet. But the sight of Mike irritates William to a profound degree, which makes him think that maybe things will eventually be okay.

"Hey, man," Mike says, hugging Butcher. "Good to see you."

Butcher returns the greeting and the hug with no commentary, which leaves William fairly--and again, irritably--sure that everyone else has known where Mike was all along, and he is the sole figure out of the loop. Which is probably only logical, but _Christ_ , it grates his nerves.

Mike sets his case down and glances over at William, his expression unreadable. "Bill."

"Carden."

"Ready to do this?"

William's jaw tightens so fast it hurts. "Should I be asking you that? I've been at practice."

"Chizzy sent me my parts." Mike doesn't flinch. "I'm ready."

"Great." William looks away, letting his eyes move over everything else in the room. "So we're just waiting on Adam."

"He was going to stop and get coffee," Butcher says, still sounding infuriatingly calm, so Zen that William wants to hit him. "Fortification."

"Better be doughnuts, too." Mike's voice is light, amused. William takes a slow breath. Right. Well. It's good that he's going to have a few minutes to reconcile himself to the idea that apparently this is how it's going to be, neutral and cool and like nothing happened at all.

If that's the game, he can totally win.

It is the game. They're all so aggressively normal and avoidant that it makes William's skin crawl. They're so neutral that nobody makes eye contact with anyone else, so calm that they go three days without anyone raising his voice.

It's unnatural. It's terrifying.

"I have no idea what to do with this," he tells Gabe on the phone after day five. There had been a few exciting spikes in tension where one of them had snapped at someone else--but it was Sisky, both times, not Mike or William himself, and that alone is enough to prove that the entire _understructure_ of the state of Denmark is rotting and soon they are all going to fall into the sea.

"Don't freak out," Gabe says patiently. There's no hint of command in his voice this time, no force; they're not doing that tonight, though William itches to ask for it. He's not all that sure it would make him feel better, but it might be worth the try. It has to be better than nothing, the chilly endless _nothing_ he's getting from Mike every day.

But Gabe's tired; William can hear it in his voice. Anything he could manage at this point would be purely for William's benefit, forced and performative. That would be a shitty thing to do, and William doesn't need that guilt on top of everything else.

Apparently his motives are going to be accidentally selfish no matter what, if he turns them over and looks at the underside. Wonderful.

"He hates me so much," he says without thinking.

"No, he doesn't."

"He really does."

"He _really_ doesn't." Gabe sighs, the sound rattling over the phone. "I promise."

"Don't start the whole secret repressed love routine again."

"I won't. I'm starting to feel like I'm stuck on repeat and wasting my breath."

William bites his lip and glares up at the ceiling. He is _not_ fighting with Gabe about this again. It only ends in a headache and a feeling of anxious discomfort in his stomach, like he's forgetting something important. Besides, it isn't fair to Gabe to keep him on repeat forever. It's the kind of thing that could make Gabe decide to say forget all of this and walk away.

"I don't know what to do," he says instead.

"I would suggest talking to him, but that might be too wild and crazy."

"Fuck off."

"I'm actually going to, man, because I am exhausted and this is going nowhere." Gabe doesn't sound pissed, just tired, so the flare of panic in William's chest doesn't last too long. Nobody's leaving yet. "Baby, I love you, but shit or get off the pot already. I'll see you soon."  
**  
Mike opens the door and looks William up and down slowly. "Are you drunk?"

William shakes his head, curling his fingers in the cuffs of his shirt. "I had two drinks. In an hour. So I'm not drunk."

"But here you are."

"I didn't realize I had to be drunk to come over."

"You don't have to, but I figured you _would_." Mike rubs his eye and steps back, clearing the doorway. "Come on, then."

William steps inside and looks around, stopping when he sees the couch. "You bought a new guitar."

Mike follows his gaze and shrugs. "Yeah. A couple, actually, but that's the one I like."

Well, at least now William knows that Mike had felt some kind of emotional turmoil. He tends to buy guitars when he's really happy or completely conflicted, and when he's happy, he stops at one. "May I?"

Mike shrugs again and William takes it as a yes, sitting down on the couch and pulling the guitar into his lap. It's used, a little battered, but it has a nice sound even just brushing his fingers over the strings. "Nice."

"Yeah. Like I said. I like it." Mike runs his hand through his hair and shrugs yet again. "So."

William sets the guitar aside and folds his hands in his lap. "So."

Mike's expression is carefuly blank. "What do you want?"

"To talk."

"That's not really my thing."

"Tough."

Mike raises his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"I said tough." William takes a deep breath, reminding himself not to get angry. "We _need_ to talk."

"About what?"

"Don't play dumb."

"Maybe I'm not playing."

" _Mike_."

Mike sighs, looking around the room and then sitting down on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest. "Fine. Say what you want to say."

"Talking implies an exchange of thoughts. Both of us."

"You go first."

William's hands creep up into his sleeves again, fingers catching in the cuffs. "I'm sorry. About what happened. It won't happen again. Ever."

"No, it won't."

"But things...things can't be like _this_." He gestures vaguely, hopelessly, encompassing the whole world with a flap of his arms. "I can't deal with this. Us being all messed up and weird and...distant." Mike stares blankly at him. "You can't tell me you like things like this either."

Mike finally looks away. "No."

"I'm very...I'm very scared."

"Of what?"

"That I've ruined things. Us, the band. No. Mostly us. Our friendship."

Mike is still looking away, at the guitar, like it's just fascinating. "We're friends, Bill."

"But it's different," William presses. "It's...it's wrong."

Mike's shoulders jerk in another small shrug. "I don't know what to tell you."

"You left."

"I had to think. I had to deal with shit."

William presses his thumb against a hole in the fabric of his shirt, watching it stretch and give way bit by bit. "Everyone leaves me. Everyone who...I'm very hard on people who matter to me, and I know that, and I try...but I am who I am, and I can't change, and they leave."

"That's bullshit, Bill." William shakes his head and Mike makes a frustrated noise, resting his chin on his knees. "I didn't leave _you_."

William looks at him. "You haven't come back, either."

Mike stares at him for a long moment before dropping his eyes. "What about Gabe? He loves you."

William swallows. "He can't stay."

"Why not?"

"It isn't who he is." William's quiet for a minute, working his thumb through the hole in his sleeve. "It's not what we have. He loves me, and he'd fly across the world in a heartbeat if I need him, but he can't stay. And I don't ask him to." The unspoken _anymore_ rings horribly loudly in the room. "I understand." Mike's raised eyebrow is really loud, too. "I haven't totally _forgiven_ it, but I do understand. And I love him, too, so we...find ways that work." The hole rips wider and he slides his index finger through it, too. "Besides, I have other people who fill that spot in my life. Even ones I don't realize are doing it. Or, well, I did."

Mike rubs his jaw, closing his eyes. "I'm a little dense sometimes, but that's referring to me, right?"

"You. Christine, before. The guys. We're a family."

"Yeah. We are." Mike nods slowly. "You're adopted, by the way."

"What?"

"We were going to tell you on your birthday, but Sisky thought that was a dick move."

"You're such an asshole." William shakes his head, smiling. "You're my anchor, Mike. I need you."

"I need you, too."

William stares at him. Never in a million years had he expected to hear _that_. "You do? For...for what? Tell me what you need and I'll be it."

Mike laughs, low and rough and a little helpless, then puts his hand over his mouth, looking at William over the edge of his fingers.

"Come on," William says, trying to smile. "Your turn to talk and share."

"I'm not the one with words."

William's throat is suddenly very dry. "Then show me."

"Maybe." Mike looks away again, at the guitar and then at the window. "I need some more time to think."

William's heart aches in his chest. "How long?"

"I don't know. But I'm not ready yet." He shrugs. "I'll let you know when I am. Okay? It's the best I can do."

William nods slowly. "I should go, then?"

Mike nods back. "Yeah. You should. But I'll see you tomorrow."  
**  
William's hands are shaking. This happens, on too little sleep and too much caffeine and the grinding pressure of recording, the need to be perfect.

Today is off to a bad start in the category of perfect.

"Let's do it again," he says, staring at the mic. He can do this. He knows how to do this. The microphone is not an alien creature out to destroy him, and the sick beat of panic in his chest is unreasonable.

"You want to take a break first?" Their producer is just the nicest guy, all kind and accommodating. William wants to have him killed. "Get some water?"

"No, I'm good." He puts his hands on his hips and breathes in, slowly, trying to feel his lungs expand through his whole body. "Let's do this."

He can see the others outside the booth, lounging and listening and giving each other shit. They all look calm. He wants to kill them, too.

His hands are shaking. He slides his headphones more comfortably into place and closes his eyes, taking another deep breath and beginning the song again.

He makes it past the first verse this time before he stumbles. Halfway through the second, actually, and then his throat just closes, choking on the words, leaving him empty and grasping for a moment and then nothing, _fuck_ , another blown take.

"Okay," comes that fucking calm voice. "Okay, that's fine, let's try getting that water and then we'll--"

"No." William yanks his headphones off, flinging them away to swing uselessly on their cord. The microphone is still in front of his face and he smacks at it blindly, knocking it away too. He punches the wall hard, then again, pain shooting up his arm but no satisfying crash, the soundproofing takes it all. "No, no, goddamn it, Jesus Christ. I can't fucking--"

He keeps hitting the wall over and over again, wanting response, wanting a sound, and anyway his hands can't shake when they're punching that stupid paneling. They hurt, but pain helps, it gives him something to focus on, somewhere to pour all of this useless fucking energy in his head that refuses to become songs.

"Bill. Bill." Hands close around his wrists, pulling him away from the wall, taking away his pain and the stubborn failed sounds. He struggles, trying to pull free, but the hands tighten, and whoever's holding him physically hauls him around.

He blinks, finding himself facing Mike, and shakes his head. "I can't fucking do this."

"Calm down," Mike says quietly.

"No." William tries again to yank his wrists free. Mike's grip tightens, and part of William wants to moan, to duck his head and surrender into that. The rest wants to keep fighting and hope that Mike won't let go. The story of his life: all he wants to do is fight to lose.

"Bill," Mike says firmly. William shakes his head again.

"I can't do this. I can't. I can't. This time, it's all...it's not working, it's ruined, I can't do it. Did you hear that? The last take? I'm fucking choking, I'm broken, I can't--"

Mike looks over his shoulder, out of the booth, and William can't see but can imagine the other guys standing there, looking on in worry and disappointment, asking who had their money down on _this_ being the day where William came apart again, laughing at him. Knowing this was how it was always going to turn out.

"Come on," Mike says, and then he's hauling him out of the booth, across the studio, out into the hall, and William's still fighting, stumbling as Mike moves him along, but it's not much of a fight and it doesn't do any good.

Then they're in the empty, quiet corridor, and his shoulders ache as they hit the wall. He groans in protest, struggling against Mike's hold again.

Except Mike's not holding his wrists anymore. His hands are free. Mike's leaning in against him, his forearm braced across William's chest, holding him to the wall with the weight of his body. His legs are tangled with William's, braced where William's are weak. Their hips are together, the lines of their torsos up to the heavy solid press of Mike's arm, and William takes a sharp breath, startled by the heat of Mike against him.

"Calm down," Mike says, his voice low and firm, sending a shudder through William. It's not--quite--an order, but it's close, it's close, and it's Mike.

Mike brings his free hand up, catching William's chin and forcing him to look at him. "It's okay," he says, just as low and intense and _meaning_ something just out of William's reach. "It's _okay_ , Bill."

William takes a shaky breath, then another. He hates the sound he makes as he meets Mike's eyes--he meant it to be a question, but none of the words survive, only a thin, keening whine.

"It's okay," Mike repeats, whispering now. "It is."

William can feel his heart pounding in his chest, under the pressure of Mike's arm. Mike's weight holding him in place, grounding him. He closes his eyes, trying to just feel that steadiness and use it to find his way back to control, back into his head.

Then Mike's mouth is against his, warm and tentative, tongue just teasing against his lips. It's a question, and William answers on instinct and impulse and adrenaline, parting his lips and kissing Mike back.

They stand there for a long, frozen moment, pressed up to the wall, kissing like it's the last hope of salvation for anything.

Mike steps back and William grabs for his arms, panic gone but balance nowhere near returned yet.

"Should get back in there and try that again," Mike says softly. "Get it right this time." William nods and Mike gently works his arms free. "Go on."

It still takes five more tries. But the panic stays away, and when he feels it threaten again he looks out into the studio and sees Mike watching him, and it's replaced by something else, warmer and fuller and steady beneath his feet.  
*****  
Mike doesn't like to think of himself as a chickenshit, but there's pretty much no question that there's a little bit of that going on right now. He's been sitting in his car outside Bill's place for a solid twenty minutes without making a move to go inside. People keep thinking he's about to free up the parking space, so they sit in traffic and honk at him and he has to wave them off and then they flip him off and he returns the favor and there's yelling and seriously, four times now, what the fuck is this neighborhood?

He is a chickenshit and he needs to go inside.

There's a slight sense of deja vu as he digs the bottle of whiskey out of the passenger-side footwell. The last time he came to Bill's house with alcohol was the night everything blew up. He frowns, looking at the bottle and then at the building and then waving energetically at another stupid asshole who thinks he's moving his car. Maybe he shouldn't take this inside at all. It could be asking for trouble.

On the other hand, it's a tradition, and traditions are important. They listen to the rough cut, they drink, they feel uncomfortable and proud at the same time, they argue, they write down notes to take back to the producer, they drink some more, at some point one of them falls off his chair.

Usually the whole band is there, but he doesn't see anyone else's car out here on the street. Which makes him suspect he may have been set up, god _damn_ it, Bill, and that means he should almost definitely not take the whiskey inside. Sobriety is the better part of valor, or something.

There's a tap on his window and he jumps, dropping the bottle back into the footwell again. Bill squints at him through the glass.

"You're freaking everybody out," he says. "My neighbors are going to call the cops. That's a day-care center over there, genius, and you're lurking and drinking. Come inside."

Mike doesn't bother pointing out that he wasn't drinking _yet_ , just grabs his keys and gets out of the car. "I hate your neighborhood."

"Whatever." Bill holds the elevator door for him. "I've got the rough cut, I've got wine, I made spaghetti."

Mike looks sideways at him. "By which you mean beer and carry-out, right?"

"No." Bill bounces a little on his toes. "Wine is wine and spaghetti is spaghetti."

Shit. He's not only been set up, he's been set up into a _date_. There better not be any candles or he's going to...

Sit there and take it, probably. He can't even pretend he's going to leave again. The one and only thing he really figured out for sure while he was gone was that he doesn't want to leave again.

"I've got the rough cut," Bill says, ushering him into the apartment and tossing his keys aside. "We can listen while we eat."

"Where are the guys?"

Bill blinks at him, all innocence. "They couldn't make it."

"Really."

"I couldn't even get ahold of them."

"Really."

"My phone died right after I talked to you. Weird, right?"

Mike rolls his eyes, looking at the table. "I can't believe you actually cooked."

"It's putting pasta in water and opening a jar of sauce. It's not brain surgery."

"Still, it's kinda..." He gestures helplessly, unable to finish that thought. "You know?"

"Probably not." Bill smiles at him, the steely determined smile he knows too well. "Park your butt and I'll put the music on."

Mike sits, because he doesn't know what else to do. He pours himself some of the wine and sips, resisting the urge to gulp. He's also resisting the urge to watch Bill move around the room. He's _aware_ of where Bill is, if they're in the same room he's always at least vaguely aware of where Bill is relative to him, and whether he's running hot or cold or despondent or annoying. That's something he's figured out since he came back: he doesn't want to be gone, but if he's going to be here he needs to _be here_. Be the thing Bill leans on and pushes against and sparks off of. Play his part.

The idea of doing it on purpose and with full awareness is weirder than it makes any sense for it to be. It's the same thing he's always done, except now he's thinking about it. And thinking leads to more thinking, wondering what it looks like from the other side, what exactly it is Bill does for him that he can't see and doesn't have words for except _I'd miss it if it wasn't there_.

Fuck, maybe he should just drink the wine straight from the bottle.

"Are you even paying attention?" Bill asks sharply, and Mike looks up. "I'm about to press play and I don't feel like you're paying attention."

He flips Bill off and takes another drink, and gives his attention to the music.

It's okay, it's solid; he's got plenty of comments, but nothing's a deal-breaker, which is how it's supposed to be. They got all the deal-breakers out of their system while they were recording, trying it this way and another take that way and snarling at each other and laughing at each other and dragging Bill out into the hallway to pin him to the wall. Five times, he had to do that, by the end of recording. Five times he dragged Bill away from the edge of wherever it is he goes when he can't keep it together anymore, holding him still and telling him it wasn't the end of anything, being that solid thing. Five times he ended up kissing him, starting out softly every time but never staying there, ending up deep and warm and surprising himself with the desire for _more_ that came out of his own head.

Only five times, on the one hand. On the other, five _fucking_ times. He doesn't know what to do with this.

They kill the bottle of wine and get most of the way through another, listening and talking and running it back to listen again. He feels warm by the time they get to the end, warm and a little blurry, and vaguely aware that Bill is mocking him, with a shit-eating grin and those stupid long legs of his all stretched out under the table.

"Lightweight," Bill pronounces, waving his glass. "When did _that_ happen, my dear Santi?"

"Blow me," Mike mutters, rubbing his knuckles over his eyes. "Shit."

"Don't worry, I'll never tell," Bill says, getting to his feet.

"Where are you going?"

"Couch. C'mon. Let's sober up and tell each other lies about how awesome the album is and _this time_ it's going to happen."

He detours to start the recording over again, so Mike gets to the couch first, flopping down and closing his eyes. A minute later he feels Bill settle in next to him, a line of heat leaning up against his shoulder. "It _is_ awesome," Mike says after a moment.

"It doesn't suck."

"It's solid."

"It's good."

"Yeah." Mike nods and shifts his weight a little, letting Bill settle against him more comfortably. "Good."

"And we did it without losing any band members." Mike can hear the slight smile. "Only temporarily misplacing one."

"Hey, I came back."

"Yeah." Bill moves, pulling away, and Mike opens his eyes. Bill's looking at him seriously, intently. "You did."

Mike holds his gaze for a long moment and then Bill leans in, giving Mike plenty of time to move away. He doesn't, though, just closes his eyes again and meets Bill's kiss, tasting the wine in his mouth.

This is different than in the studio hallway--private, and quiet, and Bill isn't flipping the hell out. It's easy to get lost in it, and more than that it's _safe_ to get lost, until it feels like they've been kissing forever. At some point Bill moves, straddling Mike's lap, warm and heavy. Bill feels _good_ against him, and Mike lets his hands find Bill's hips, holding him loosely in place.

"You actually had a good idea, there," Bill says after a while, pulling back and looking at him with half-closed eyes and a definite air of speculation. Mike returns it with confusion, because if they're going to choose between making out and talking, then...well, then Bill sucks at life.

"The blow you idea," Bill clarifies with a grin. "Don't look so fucking scared, Carden."

"I'm not scared," Mike mutters, easing his hands away. "But you and I don't--"

Bill puts his hand over Mike's mouth. "Things change," he says softly. "Don't tell me you haven't thought that, too."

 _Some things stay the same_ , Mike thinks, but he just nods behind Bill's hand, until Bill takes it away and moves back off his lap, getting down to his knees in front of the couch. He looks up at Mike and for a minute Mike feels dizzy, because Bill looking at him like that is...it's a foreign country, it's another planet, but then Bill grins, quick and so fucking cocky. That look, he knows; Bill being a smug idiot is familiar, and that's comfortable enough to get him to help undo his jeans.

Mike kind of expects him to go slow, or tease, but Bill takes him deep right away, his mouth tight enough to make Mike gasp and his hips buck up hard. Bill's hands grip more firmly on his hips, then slide down to settle against his inner thighs, holding him still and open.

"Fuck," Mike whispers, gripping the edge of the couch hard as Bill pulls back to the head, sucking lightly and then flicking his tongue across the sensitive skin in a way that was just plain showing off. Mike should've known; Bill never volunteers for anything he isn't good at.

Bill glances up at him, meeting his eyes and doing that thing with his tongue again. Mike takes one hand off the edge of the couch and reaches out, brushing a fall of hair back off Bill's forehead. Bill makes a low noise around him, closing his eyes and taking him deeper again, and Mike groans, louder than he means to, enough that he should probably be embarrassed a little. That's pretty far off his radar right now, though.

He runs his fingers back through Bill's hair, letting his hand follow the curve of Bill's skull, not quite holding him down. Bill follows the slight pressure easily, going down as far as he can and then pulling back again, setting an easy rhythm of deep and tight and hot and _fuck_ until Mike is gasping again, broken and wordless and falling over the edge.

Bill sits back on his heels and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, with a little smile on his face that isn't quite a smirk but is definitely in the neighborhood. Mike shakes his head a little, catching his breath. "Don't say it."

"Didn't say anything."

"Whatever you were thinking about saying, just _don't_." He shifts, tugging his jeans back up into place so the waistband isn't digging into his ass, then holds his hand out to Bill. "Come on back up here."

He gets a knee jabbed into his thigh and an elbow in the chest as Bill gets himself settled again straddling his lap--why does Bill have to have so many fucking bony angles and sharp protrusions anyway?--but he doesn't bother complaining about it because as soon as Bill is settled, they're kissing again, deep and hungry and thick with the sour-salt taste of himself in Bill's mouth.

He slides his hand down Bill's chest to his jeans, popping the button and slipping the zipper and guiding Bill's cock out while Bill groans in approval against his mouth and shoves his tongue halfway down Mike's throat. Mike gets his hand around him and returns the favor of not teasing, stroking tight and steady, sliding his thumb over the wetness of the head and then down the shaft, feeling how the change in friction makes Bill shudder against him.

They take ragged sips of breath between hard, bruising kisses, not stopping until after it's over and then some. Mike's mouth feels half ripped-up from Bill's teeth catching his lips and sliding against his tongue, the aggressive, biting way Bill kisses. He isn't sure, but he suspects Bill's looks the way his own feels, swollen dark and slick with spit. He knows that the low, satisfied sound Bill's making against his mouth matches the one that's loud in his own head and that he may or may not be making audibly. Fuck. They're both pretty far gone. It would be incredibly embarrassing if it wasn't awesome.

Bill rests his head against Mike's shoulder, breathing hard. "We should probably..."

Mike nods. "Clean up."

"Talk about this."

Mike groans and lets his head fall back against the couch. "You and your _talking_."

"Hey." Bill punches him in the ribs. "Seriously."

Mike exhales. "I think you should not be sitting in my lap while we're talking."

"That's fair." Bill eases off him and tugs his boxers back up, then kicks off his jeans. "All right. Two feet of space between us at all times. Now." He brushes his hair back and looks at Mike intently. "Are we...going to do this?"

"We just _did_. Unless I'm all sticky for a completely different reason than I thought I was."

"Be serious for ten minutes, would you?" Bill sighs and rakes his fingers through his hair again. "I mean are we going to _do this_ , as in...for real, as in a relationship?"

Mike digs his thumb into the edge of the couch cushion. "What about Gabe?"

Bill raises one eyebrow slightly. "I think that depends on your answer to the question, doesn't it?"

"I'm not going to do the stuff with you that he does."

Bill nods slightly. "I assumed that."

"I mean it."

"I know, Mike."

"But you...you need that. It's your..." He waves his hands. "Emergency release valve, or whatever."

Bill blinks a few times. "That's...not the first metaphor I would've gone for, but yeah, okay."

"So if I told you you had to give Gabe up, I would be, like, contributing to you eventually going insane, since I won't do it."

"Were you planning to tell me that?"

"No, because I'm not a complete douchebag."

Bill grins. "Good, because I'm not going to stop seeing Gabe. If you told me that, I was going to have to call it a dealbreaker."

"Why didn't you just say so in the first place, you impossible fuck?"

"Because I _am_ a complete douchebag, apparently." Bill is _beaming_ , so goddamn pleased with himself. Mike is torn between thinking it's awesome and beginning to suspect he might have made a huge mistake.

"It's not going to bug him? Sharing you?"

Bill gives him a blank look. "We're talking about Gabe, right?"

"Right." Mike nods slightly and shifts on the couch, tugging at the waist of his jeans. "Okay. So...um. I guess...we'll date, or whatever, and you and him will...do your thing when he's in town, and...what about when he's not in town?"

Bill nods, pulling the collar of his shirt up over his nose. "That's a little more complicated."

"What do you usually do when he's not around?"

A distinct flush rises in Bill's face, or what he can see of it above the shirt. "Call him and whine a lot, or...well, or find a bar and pick somebody up."

Mike looks down at the floor. "Oh."

"That sounded like 'I'm not at all cool with that,' in an elaborate secret code."

"It doesn't sound like the safest thing in the world."

"It's not," Bill says matter-of-factly. "That's sort of the point."

Mike nods a little, still studying Bill's ugly, ugly carpeting. "Yeah, I'm not at all cool with that."

"Okay." Bill nods. "Then I won't do it."

Mike blinks at him. "Just like that?"

"Of course."

"You're not going to demand an equal concession from me or something?"

"I'm sure something will come up." Bill tugs his shirt down into place again and shrugs. "We won't know if it'll work until we try, right? Cross that bridge when we get to it, and all that."

Mike narrows his eyes slightly. "You're awfully...cheerful about this."

"Why shouldn't I be? I get to keep my wonderful toppy fuckbuddy, I've picked up a boyfriend, _and_ I get the supreme satisfaction of knowing that my guitarist is, in fact, in love with me."

"Oh, fuck you, Beckett, I can still totally change my mind about _all_ of this."

"But you won't." Bill is radiating enough smugness to be seen from _space_.

"You're awfully sure."

"I know exactly how awesome I am at giving head." Bill bounces to his feet and stretches slowly. "Let's call Gabe and give him the good news."

Mike shakes his head. "Come here first." He pulls Bill down into his lap and kisses him, drawing it out for a long moment. Fuck, kissing Bill is still kind of awesome.

"That was nice," Bill says when he breaks away.

"Yeah." Mike slides his hands down to Bill's hips. "I'm not done yet."

"What about..."

Mike shakes his head and rubs his thumbs in slow, firm circles, enjoying the instant and obvious distraction in Bill's eyes. "When we tell him, he's going to be even more full of himself than you are, and it's probably going to piss me off, so let's save it for, like, tomorrow morning, okay?"

"Oh. Good point." Bill laughs, low and hot and happy. "Excellent, excellent point. Yes. Tomorrow." He tilts his head, nuzzling just above the pulse point in Mike's throat. "I'm sure we can keep ourselves occupied until then."  
**  
(epilogue)  
Mike glances at the clock and rolls his eyes. Fucking hedonists. Already an hour past when they told him they'd probably be done. There was probably special equipment involved. Or, like, stuff that had to be cleaned up. He doesn't know, he doesn't understand this shit. Those two keep trying to send him to websites where he can "educate himself," but he's still not interested, and not ever _going_ to be interested, and he's just about ready to block their goddamn e-mail addresses.

Or so he keeps claiming, but nobody even pretends to believe it, including himself.

He grabs the remote and flips away from the baseball game, looking for something with cars or explosions. If he'd known they were going to take this long, he would've had a snack. He's supposed to take dinner over when they call, but he's hungry _now_ , and if he'd had a snack _an hour ago_ , when they were _supposed_ to call, he would--

His phone rings. He mutes the TV and snatches it up. "Hello?"

"Hey." Gabe's voice has that soft, light quality that it gets after he and William scene, the one that means he's giving William his aftercare, soothing and petting and telling him he's wonderful. It's a voice Mike's pretty sure nobody but William hears in the normal run of things. "Come over whenever. He decided on Thai, if that's cool."

"That's fine." Mike gets up and goes for his jacket, shifting the phone against his ear. "You guys, um, have fun?"

"Oh yeah." Gabe sounds distinctly pleased now. Mike rolls his eyes and grabs his keys. "He did beautiful." Mike can hear William's voice in the background, a little rough and shaky. "Shh, Bilvy, I'm telling him. Mike? He did so well he thinks you should go to that one liquor store where you can get that beer he likes."

"I'm not driving an extra fifteen minutes for his weirdass organic beer."

"He really wants it."

"Jesus, I'm not supposed to be the whipped one here, you know."

"Just keep right on proving that I'm the fun one, the good-looking one, _and_ the funny one in this setup, Carden. See you soon." Gabe hangs up and Mike rolls his eyes, stomping down the stairwell. He's totally going to go get Bill his stupid organic beer, because Bill is extra-cuddly and affectionate after he scenes, but he's also extra-sensitive and, if he doesn't get his way, extra- _pouty_.

Mike and Gabe are _both_ the whipped ones here, really.

He calls the food order in while he picks up the beer and gets to Bill's in forty-five minutes, which isn't bad all things considered. When he lets himself in, he finds them on the couch. Gabe's sitting at one end with the remote in his hand and Bill's head in his lap, gently stroking Bill's hair back off his face. Bill's hair is still a mess, but he's not flushed or sweaty anymore, just smiling a slight, contented smile, eyes closed and moving under Gabe's hand like a cat.

"I come bearing gifts," Mike says, setting the bag and the beer on the table and then leaning in to kiss Bill. "Hey."

"Hi." Bill's smile gets wider and he reaches up to touch Mike's face. Mike catches his hand and threads their fingers together, squeezing lightly and studying the dark red marks on Bill's wrist.

"New cuffs?"

"Rope," Bill says, settling back against Gabe, his smile turning smug and satisfied.

"You suck at this," Gabe adds. He's smirking a little too, the asshole. Mike should've jerked off before coming over so they could all just be so damn happy.

He _is_ happy, though. Really, really happy. It's weird as fuck and if he tries too hard to break it down he ends up confused and with a headache, so he leaves it alone. Happy is happy. Things are good.

"Fuck you, Gabanti, I brought you food." Mike kisses Bill again and heads for the kitchen, messing up Gabe's hair as he passes. "We all drinking the weirdo beer or is there normal stuff in the fridge?"

"Neither of you is getting a drop of my precious," Bill says, waving his hand in the air defiantly.

"Be still," Gabe says, stroking his head again. Mike pauses to watch Bill curl up more into Gabe's lap, and smiles a little, then shakes his head as he goes for the silverware and drinks. Gabe has magic powers at this stage of things. It's nice to watch, to see Bill just completely open and contented, all of his dials turned down to zero.

When he comes back, he sits at the opposite end of the couch from Gabe, pulling Bill's legs into his own lap. "What are we watching?" he asks.

" _Braveheart_ ," Gabe says happily. "Going to watch some fuckers get killed."

"Sweet." He pets Bill's hip. "You going to sit up and eat?"

"Do I have to?"

"Yes," Mike and Gabe say in unison. Ganging up on Bill is a side-benefit neither of them thought of to begin with, but that turned out to be _awesome_. They kept a scoreboard for a while, until Bill threw it out.

Bill rolls his eyes, but he's grinning as he swings his legs to the floor and levers himself up out of Gabe's lap, Gabe's hand moving to his shoulder to support him. Mike slides his arm around Bill's waist, shifting him over to lean against him. Bill tilts his head to against Gabe's hand and leans his body into Mike's. He closes his eyes and his smile gets a little softer, more secret. It's the one he gets right after they come offstage, like he's in the best place in the world.

Mike can't help but smile himself, tearing his eyes away from Bill and back to the screen before it gets too sappy or stupid. Food, beer, friends, that love thing Gabe keeps trying to trick him into saying in public, and a movie with fuckers getting killed.

Mike still doesn't get off on being right, and he's got a firm policy against admitting he's ever wrong. But he's feeling generous right now, and they're not likely to ask out loud, so in the privacy of his head he'll admit that yeah, life turned out pretty good.


End file.
